Xenon Report

The most interesting discussion that I initiated was on the noble gas, Xenon. It was during a chemistry lecture when I learnt that this inert gas was used during surgery as an anesthetic agent. This agent affects our nervous system upon administration and is quite potent compared to other agents such as nitrous oxide. I became more curious about Xenon and its role in human biochemistry so I found a detailed but well-written report on it from the Anthroscopy Association of North America (AANA)'s journal. This discussion was quite fascinating because it drew upon all the courses taken by McMaster health science students: chemistry, psychobiology, cellular and molecular biology, and inquiry. Inquiry was one of the sources of motivation and inspiration

The author's source was a website which describes how researchers manipulated the brain of the participants and observed how their views and behaviour toward religion and immigrants changed. It was particularly surprising to see how the participants became somewhat atheistic and had a more sympathetic view of foreigners. This showed how our psychobiology affects our attitudes towards such controversial topics and how the brain affects and reacts to different social constructs. All these ideas can be tied back to biological reductionism which stresses on the fact that there are neural correlates for any observed behaviour and also to the monistic theory which rejects the notion of the mind and body being separate entities. All in all, this discussion was worthwhile and well-rounded because it draws upon sociology, psychobiology, and philosophy, and thus, can be seen in a multidisciplinary manner. Personally, I do not believe in any supernatural deity and I always thought that god was a figment of people's imagination but did not have any scientific resource to back it up. However, this experiment clearly confirmed those

I have consistently read and replied to other students' posts by spending at least 5 hours a week on the LearnLink discussion forum. There is an incredible 2,788 posts made in Discussion 1 and I have learnt about a wide variety of material related to psychobiology and even other disciplines such as philosophy. I have seen and participated in discussions that involved deep questions related to our place in the universe and why we are here; the level of thinking and information coming from my peers was truly remarkable and I most certainly enjoyed arguing, debating, and pondering over these important topics with my fellow classmates. Moreover, I became aware for the first time about phenomenon and theories such as synesthesia, dialectical monism, essentialism, neuromarketing, and many more. I am confident to say that participation in this discussion has made a better and more knowledgeable person. Furthermore, I myself posted to initiate discussions on topics that I deemed to be of relevance to our class. Examples include a discussion on xenon as an anesthetic agent, a split-brain experiment, and also general questions related to coursework expectations. I tried to initiate discussions that were not only applicable to psychobiology but were also linked to other scientific disciplines such as cell biology and biochemistry. In these discussions, I gave my own opinions but also cited other research