Please read carefully the section on Stereotaxic Surgery in your text before you

Question

Please read carefully the section on Stereotaxic Surgery in your text before you start this assignment.

Imagine that you are in a spherical building which resembles a cranial cavity (the inside of a skull where the brain is). You are on the second floor, and the floor has a diameter of 20 feet across from the front door to the back door.

If you look up, you notice that the peak of the domed ceiling is 10 feet above the floor, and there is a small red circle at the peak. Since you are studying stereotaxic surgery, you imagine that the small red circle marks the location of the bregma.

There is a north door (front) and a south door on opposite sides of the room. The doors are therefore 20 feet apart (notice that I am repeating myself to make sure that you have the proper orientation).

You are standing right in the center of the floor facing the north door (front). There is a center line from the north door to the south door. Your friend, Ed, who is 6 feet tall, just entered from the south door. In one stride along the center line, he moves 2 feet from the south door. He sees a beautiful young woman to his right, so he takes a right angle turn and strides directly over to talk to her...so he is now 2 feet from the center line.

You realize that you have to wait your turn to talk to the flirtatious Ed, so you decide to create a stereotaxic game to play. What, you wonder, are the 3-dimensional coordinates from bregmato the top of Ed's head?

Once you have those coordinates, you will have defined (specified the location of) the top of Ed's head within the context of the room! Hurray for you!!!

So, please write down the 3-dimensional coordinates which define or can locate Ed's head within the room. Your unit of measure is feet. You can write down your thought processes as you are calculating the coordinates if you want to make sure I understand your answer, but it is not necessary. If you do write down your thoughts leading to your answer, please make it 100 words or less. (Please note that the assignment is NOT about calculating a series of 2-dimensional coordinates, but, one 3-dimensional coordinate.) In order to submit your answer, please click on the underlined title (stereotaxic mapping for chapter 5) at the top of these instructions. Then, in the next window, click on [Write Submission], and write your answer into the Submission box (please do not submit your answer in the Comments box).

(Here is an example in which I will use a classroom as a metaphor to the cranial cavity and students sitting inside as nuclei of the brain.
We are all in a classroom which is 30 feet by 30 feet. All the students are sitting down and facing front. I, as the instructor, have placed an 8 foot flag pole at the center of the classroom. The top of the pole is 4 feet higher than the heads of the sitting students. I tell the students that the top of the flag pole is the bregma. I then point to the student named Amygdala and point out that Amygdala is 18 feet from the front of the room and 5 feet from the right wall (as you are facing front).  
I instruct the class to tell me the 3-dimensional stereotaxic coordinates of the top of Amygdala's head.
ANSWER: from bregma, 3 feet posterior, 10 feet lateral right, 4 feet ventral.

HINTS: you know where bregma is - it is 15 feet from the front and the back wall, and it is 15 feet from the left and right walls. It is also 4 feet above the heads of the students. Do you agree? The student, Amygdala, is 18 feet from the front wall, so how many feet behind bregma is that? Amygdala is 5 feet from the right wall and bregma is 15 feet from the right wall. Going in a lateral direction from the right wall, how many feet is Amygdala away from bregma? Can you take all of these dimensions and figure out how the stereotaxic coordinates were calculated for the location of Amygdala relative to bregma?

Explanation / Answer

Considering at the planar level the floor is a circle the person is standing at 10 feet from the north and south door Ed comes from the south door and walks two feet towards the person and takes right two feet . The coordinates of Ed are eight feet from the person, 4 feet from the roof top, and using Pythagoras theorem the distance of Ed from South door is 2.82 feet .

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