Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

This past week of school was significantly shortened by the Thanksgiving holiday. As a result, I learned about 60% less than most other weeks. Despite the paucity of class time, there was still plenty of work to do and stuff that I learned. For this week's blog, I have been debating whether to write about basal ganglia or diabetes. Writing about basal ganglia would reference my neural control course, whereas writing about diabetes would refer to my exercise physiology course. For a couple of reasons, I've not written very much about my neural control course thus far this semester. As far as coursework, neural control is more closely related to my research interests than exercise physiology. That being said, I've aways loved to move my body and work out. And the exercise physiology course has focused on what happens while moving the body and working out! I've found this exercise physiology course to be personally very interesting, and the material also potentially i...

This past week I've been learning about how high altitude impacts physical activity. As many of you have probably experienced, hiking in the mountains of Colorado can be more fatiguing than hiking in Wisconsin's Blue Mound State Park . Why is it much easier for a flatlander to exercise in the hills of Southern Wisconsin's Driftless region than to exercise in Colorado's high country? Atmospheric pressure rapidly decreases as altitude increases, and as a result, there's a lot less oxygen available at Monarch Mountain Ski Area in Colorado than there is at Tyrol Basin here in Wisconsin. While this decrease in available oxygen may seem like the beginning and end of the story, the physiology is actually much more interesting than simply more/less oxygen. Earning turns outside of Leadville, CO (huffing and puffing every step of the way) Let's start with looking at how your body responds to an environment that has less available oxygen (hypoxic). A few ...

When I watched TV as a kid, we would watch reruns at the end of the regular season. Somewhere along the line, it seemed as though the term reruns was outmoded by encore . I'm now hearing previously-aired programming called encore programming. Similarly with used cars; the car dealers used to have a used car lot, and now they have a lot filled with pre-owned cars. The times change, don't they? Anyway, this week's blog is a pre-owned, encore blog! I wrote this essay in 2012, and I feel that its sentiment remains relevant in 2016. The divides of our nation remain intact, and have perhaps even strengthened. The following essay reflects some of my thoughts on actionable steps we can take within our yoga community to help rebuild our commons. ___________________________________________________ The angle of the sun and the cooler nights are a reliable indicator that autumn is upon us. And every four years, the arrival of autumn hearkens the arrival of something more th...

Notice how the elbows and knees hyperextend? The capacity to hyperextend is a key trait of joint laxity. It's been awhile since I've written much about my intended research. While research is central to the Ph.D degree, there are a few details that I must address prior to fully delving into research. Firstly, there's the not insignificant matter of earning an MS degree. Some academic programs consider the Master's degree an essential prerequisite for admission to the Ph.D program, while other academic programs award the Master's degree more or less as a consolation prize. (i.e. -  if the pursuit of the Ph.D goes fully awry, you're ushered out the door with an MS) The Kinesiology Department here at the University of Wisconsin is in the former category. While my eye-on-the-prize is the Ph.D, I must satisfactorily complete the coursework and thesis for the MS before I can get all fancy-pants and pursue a Ph.D. People with joint laxity often have tight m...

A recent article on CR A friend of mine once described his tendency toward ADHD as like being a ferret on crack . While I have yet to directly observe a rodent smoking a Schedule II controlled substance, my friend's metaphor immediately created a mental image that's endured in my mind. I have a pretty strong tendency toward ADHD. On the rare days that I find open space in my schedule, I often wander from task to task, like a vagabond in my own home. It's only through diligent mind-training (meditation) that I've reined in my random-walk mind in order to accomplish some of the goals that I've set for myself. Even though I've largely learned to work with my ADHD tendencies, every so often I'm still reminded of my tendency toward this cognitive Brownian motion. Just the other day, I was on the PubMed website looking up a neuroimaging study on people with joint laxity (fascinating, BTW). While on PubMed, an article on calorie restriction (CR) appeared i...

Your respiratory system relies on feedback from your body to determine the depth and rate of breathing. This diagram is an example of a mechanical system that also uses feedback. In last week's post, I briefly discussed how yogic deep breathing isn't necessarily how you should breathe throughout your day. Did you get a chance to view Leslie Kaminoff's video ? I got quite a kick out of his story... largely because I have similar stories! But rather than boring you with tales of runs-gone-awry, this week I'll go into a little more depth on the mechanisms underlying cardiorespiratory control. An example of a feedback loop In the earliest days of automotive fuel-injection, the fuel was simply squirted into the combustion chamber. (do you remember before there was fuel-injection; when cars had carburetors?) While there was some rhyme and reason to the amount and timing of the squirt, too much or too little fuel was often injected into the engine. When too little fuel...