AHA moment at KFSH

At KFSH field trip, I had a lot of AHA moments when every time, for one second, I felt like a genius after discovering a new major concept by suddenly making all the connections. And yet, I have to point out that one of them was so fascinating that it made me want to explore the roots of knowledge regarding our brain communication and body function. It was triggered by a sample movement made by the presenter Dr. Hani. He pulled up his hands so we could see them, and simply enclosed his fingers around his other hand's index finger and started moving it constantly. He then looked at us and made a pose, wanting us to visually analyze what he just did so we could understand what he was trying to tell us. Suddenly, everything made sense. This weird name neuroplasticity that he had just previously announced a few seconds ago also made sense and was now guaranteed a place in my long-term memory (which he also amazingly explained). Let me explain: neuroplasticity is when an inactive and damaged neuron in our body gets helped and replaced by already-existing ones. It is really important and pivotal for our body since our body can't reproduce new neurons and a neuron is like a message transmitter that transmits electrical commends from our brain to different parts of our body and when one of them is damaged it cuts of the hall message therefore paralyzing this certain part of our body where the neuron was damaged. That is why, physiotherapists tend to replace this neuron's function with the nearby neurons who take over it by exercising the affected part, making it functional again. This consists of constantly and frequently moving the damaged part, triggering, little by little the other nearby neurons to help out by redirecting them from other parts of the body to the affected area. And after long frequent exercises, the damaged neuron gets fully taken over by other neurons and the affected part works independently like it once did. This hall explanation was as I already said, triggered by a sample visual movement which truly made this AHA moment special and astonishing.

To conclude I would like to thank Miss. Ahmad, Miss De Clarq and her team for organizing and planning this amazing informative field trip for us where we learned a lot of new things about the brain and our body as well about what physiotherapists do to rehabilitate people that are disabled. I would also like to thank Dr. Hani and Dr. Lina for those well-grounded and instructive presentations that enlightened us with such fascinating knowledge.

Joseph Moussa