Orbitofrontal Christmas Poem
Orbitofrontal Christmas Poem
'Twas the night before finals, when all through my brain all the neurons were stirring and firing again. The cerebellum was hung by the pons with such care, in hopes that basal ganglia soon would be there.
The colliculi were nestled all snug in their tectum,
while visions of hippocampi danced with tegmentum.
The lobes in the cortex, serotonin in their lap,
were settling my brain for a long winter's nap.
When out of the hypothalamus there arose such a clatter,
Dopamine rushed down the mesostriatal pathway to see what was the matter.
Away to the medulla it flew like a flash,
tore open the amygdala, and gave me a rash.
The action potentials glowed like the new-fallen snow and rushed to the suprachiasmatic nucleus below, when, what to my wondering optic nerve should appear, but a synaptic junction that didn’t used to be there.
With a bunch of new dendrites, too much to dismiss, I knew in a moment it must be synaptogenesis. More rapid than eagles, my neurons they fired, until my HPA-axis had the whole endocrine system wired.
Now Acetylcholine! Now GABA! Now, Dopamine and Glutamate! On, Epinephrine! On, Serotonin! On, Glycine and Aspartate! To the top of the cortex! To the back of the skull! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!
As flavours that before the wild hurricane fly, when they first touch the tongue’s tiny microvilli so up to the cortex the neurotransmitters flew, led by action potentials and some stimulus too.
And as much as I’d like to go on to the roof my reticular formation is urging me to cut short my spoof. So I’ll leave you with this note from my cingulate gyrus: may the holidays bring you joy, and warmth that is endogenous!
