Posted by For my STEAM project I have decided to research the disease Multiple Sclerosis. This is an autoimmune disorder that causes the myelin sheathe on our neurons to be damaged, which decreases the body’s ability to control electrical signals being sent to various parts of the body. This topic is especially important to me because my father was diagnosed with MS, and I’ve seen how debilitating it can be. As you will see with my attached project, I have made a model of a healthy neuron with play-doh, as well as one that is damaged because of MS so that you can see the differences.
As I was reading over John’s essay about his STEAM project on Multiple Sclerosis, I could tell that he really went above and beyond in his research because the information he includes in his essay are facts that I have never even heard about, and you can tell how he really thought about how he could set up his 500+ word essay for this project. He included some information on how COVID-19 has a big effect on Multiple Sclerosis due to it being a huge risk factor and how having other health conditions while having Multiple Sclerosis can put a significant strain on our immune system, which is something that everyone should be aware about especially if you have this autoimmune disease. Another thing I learned from reading John’s essay was one of the symptoms of having Multiple Sclerosis is that it can cause our cognitive function to be dampened, causing grey matter in the brain, leading to things like short term memory loss. One other thing that I found interesting in his essay was how John talked about how overtime the symptoms can worsen and become more severe evolving into increased muscle fatigue and even paralysis. That’s definitely scary to think about. I unfortunately didn’t get to see the picture of his clay model he did for the art portion of the project, but I bet it was amazing! Overall, I feel that John’s essay was really well thought out, and he did a really nice job of explaining every point he wanted to talk about.