3.1 Nervous System Flashcards
What is the nervous system divided into?
Central Nervous System (CNS) and Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
What is the CNS made of?
Brain and Spinal Chord
What is the PNS made of?
Neurons throughout the body
What do sensory neurons do?
Take impulses into the CNS from sense organs
What do motor neurons do?
Take impulses from the CNS to muscles and glands
What does the SNS do?
- Controls skeletal muscles and is involved in voluntary actions
- Also responsible for reflex actions
What does the ANS do?
- Regulates internal structures such as the heart, blood vessels
- Occurs through automatic, involuntary actions which involve sensory and motor neurons
- Involved in homeostatic control
What are the groups in the PNS?
Somatic Nervous System (SNS) and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
What are the groups involved in the ANS?
Sympathetic and Parasympathetic
What does the sympathetic system do?
Speeds up heart and breathing rate whilst slowing down peristalsis and production of intestinal secretions
What does the parasympathetic system do?
Slows down heart and breathing rate whilst speeding up peristalsis and production of intestinal secretions
What are the three main neural pathways?
- Converging
- Diverging
- Reverberating
What is the converging neural pathway?
- Impulses from several neurons travel to one neuron
- Increases the sensitivity to excitatory or inhibitory signals
- Direction of nerve impulses flow down into the one pathway
What is the diverging neural pathway?
- Impulses from one neuron travel to several neurons
- This affects more than one destination at a time
- Direction of nerve impulses flow down into several pathways
What is the reverberating neural pathway?
- Neurons later in the pathway link with earlier neurons, sending the impulses back through the pathway
- This allows repeated stimulation of the pathway
