Re: [HAPS-L] Cranial nerves and memes

["Teresa Ann Trendler" <tatrendler@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken,
the issue of remembering the "name" for memory tricks
is easily solved if you tell students that they fall
under "M" for memory not "P" for air.
Teri

> Years ago, I challenged my class with a contest to
> come up with the best
> cranial nerve mnemonic to replace "On old Olympus'
> towering tops...."  One
> of my students came up with the one I've used ever
> since in my textbooks,
> "OLd OPie OCcasionally TRies TRIGonometry, And Feels
> VEry GLOomy, VAGue,
> And HYPOactive" (which, for most cranial nerves, gives
> two to four of the
> initial letters, per my caps). The student, Marti
> Haykin, subsequently went
> to medical school and has become, of all things, a
> neurologist in Pittsburgh.
>
> I was checking on her and the status of Old Opie
> today, and found this
> Wikipedia page listing numerous cranial nerve
> mnemonics -- some of them
> obscene (of course!) and many of them lame, but
> whoever wrote the article
> put Old Opie at the top of the list.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_nerves
>
> Googling "Old Opie" brings up a lot of false positives
> -- references to the
> Opie & Anthony radio show, for example -- but adding a
> word ("Old Opie
> occasionally") pulls up several hits to the mnemonic,
> which appears to be
> spreading as a Dawkinsian meme.
>
> I find it sad, though, that so many health-science
> students AND INSTRUCTORS
> call such memory aids "pneumonics," as if they were
> some sort of lung
> disease. I've seen them called that right here on
> HAPS-L. If that's the
> right word for them, it's pneus to me!
>
>
> Ken
>
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