Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan with the aim of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The organization produces short lectures in the form of YouTube videos. In addition to micro lectures, the organization's website features practice exercises and tools for educators. All resources are available for free to anyone around the world. The main language of the website is English, but the content is also available in other languages.

History

The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States to immigrant parents from Bangladesh and India. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MEng in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia who needed help with math using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad.When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided that it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. The videos' popularity and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009, and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time.

Somatic

Somatic may refer to:

Related concepts

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a form of therapy aimed at relieving and resolving the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental and physical trauma-related health problems by focusing on the client’s perceived body sensations (or somatic experiences). It was introduced in Peter Levine's 1997 book Waking the Tiger. In it, he discusses at length his observations of animals in the wild, and how they deal with and recover from life-threatening situations. He concludes that their behaviour gives us "an insight into the biological healing process" (p. 98), and that "the key to healing traumatic symptoms in humans lies in our being able to mirror the fluid adaption of wild animals" (p. 17-18) as they avoid traumatization in reacting to life-threatening situations.

Conceptual basis

SE is based on the understanding that symptoms of trauma are the result of a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) whose inherent capacity to self-regulate is undermined by trauma. SE bases its approach on mammals' ability to automatically regulate survival responses from the primitive, non-verbal brain, mediated by the autonomic nervous system. In the wild, animals spontaneously "discharge" this excess energy once safe. Involuntary movements such as shaking, trembling and deep spontaneous breaths reset the ANS and restore equilibrium. SE restores this capacity to self-regulate by facilitating the release of energy and natural survival reactions stored during a traumatic event. According to founder Peter Levine, "Trauma lives in the body, not the event."

Nervous system

The nervous system is the part of an animal's body that coordinates its voluntary and involuntary actions and transmits signals to and from different parts of its body. Nervous tissue first arose in wormlike organisms about 550 to 600 million years ago. In vertebrate species it consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS contains the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are enclosed bundles of the long fibers or axons, that connect the CNS to every other part of the body. Nerves that transmit signals from the brain are called motor or efferent nerves, while those nerves that transmit information from the body to the CNS are called sensory or afferent. Most nerves serve both functions and are called mixed nerves. The PNS is divided into a) somatic and b) autonomic nervous system, and c) the enteric nervous system. Somatic nerves mediate voluntary movement. The autonomic nervous system is further subdivided into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is activated in cases of emergencies to mobilize energy, while the parasympathetic nervous system is activated when organisms are in a relaxed state. The enteric nervous system functions to control the gastrointestinal system. Both autonomic and enteric nervous systems function involuntarily. Nerves that exit from the cranium are called cranial nerves while those exiting from the spinal cord are called spinal nerves.

Somatic nervous system

The somatic nervous system (SoNS or voluntary nervous system) is the part of the peripheral nervous system associated with skeletal muscle voluntary control of body movements. The SoNS consists of afferent nerves and efferent nerves. Afferent nerves are responsible for relaying sensation from the body to the central nervous system (CNS); efferent nerves are responsible for sending out commands from the CNS to the body, stimulating muscle contraction; they include all the non-sensory neurons connected with skeletal muscles and skin. The a- of afferent and the e- of efferent correspond to the prefixes ad- (to, toward) and ex- (out of).

Structure

There are 43 segments of nerves in the human body. With each segment, there is a pair of sensory and motor nerves. In the body, 31 segments of nerves are in the spinal cord and 12 are in the brain stem.

Besides these, thousands of association nerves are also present in the body.

Thus somatic nervous system consists of three parts: