Ch.7: The Nervous System Flashcards
What are the functions of the nervous system?
- Sensory input
- Integration
- Motor output
What is sensory input?
- Gathering information
* Sensory receptors monitor changes, called stimuli, occurring inside and outside the body
What is integration?
Nervous system processes and interprets sensory input and decides whether action is needed
What is motor output?
A response, or effect, activates muscles or glands
Concept Link 1
These three overlapping nervous system functions are very similar to a feedback loop (Chapter 1, p. 19). Recall that in a feedback loop, a receptor receives sensory input, which it sends to the brain (control center) for processing (integration); the brain then analyzes the information and determines the appropriate output, which leads to a motor response.
What are nervous system classifications based on?
- Structures (structural classification)
* Activities (functional classification)
What is the structural classification of the central nervous system (CNS)?
Organs • Brain • Spinal cord Function • Integration; command center • Interprets incoming sensory information • Issues outgoing instructions
What is the structural classification of the peripheral nervous system (PNS)?
Nerves extending from the brain and spinal cord
• Spinal nerves—carry impulses to and from the spinal cord
• Cranial nerves—carry impulses to and from the brain
Functions
• Serve as communication lines among sensory organs, the brain and spinal cord, and glands or muscles
What is the functional classification of the nervous system?
- Sensory (afferent) division
* Motor (efferent) division
What is sensory (afferent) division?
- Nerve fibers that carry information to the central nervous system
- Somatic sensory (afferent) fibers carry information from the skin, skeletal muscles, and joints
- Visceral sensory (afferent) fibers carry information from visceral organs
What is motor (efferent) division?
• Nerve fibers that carry impulses away from the central nervous system organs to effector organs (muscles and glands)
What are the two subdivisions of the motor (efferent) division?
- Somatic nervous system = voluntary
• Consciously (voluntarily) controls skeletal muscles - Autonomic nervous system = involuntary
• Automatically controls smooth and cardiac muscles and glands
• Further divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
Support cells in the CNS are grouped together as:
Neuroglia
What are the general functions of support cells?
- Support
- Insulate
- Protect neurons
Nervous tissue is made up of which two principal cell types?
Supporting cells (called neuroglia, or glial cells, or glia) • Resemble neurons • Unable to conduct nerve impulses • Never lose the ability to divide Neurons
What are CNS glial cells (astrocytes)?
- Abundant, star-shaped cells
- Brace and anchor neurons to blood capillaries
- Determine permeability and exchanges between blood capillaries and neurons
- Protect neurons from harmful substances in blood
- Control the chemical environment of the brain
What are CNS glial cells (microglia)?
- Spiderlike phagocytes
- Monitor health of nearby neurons
- Dispose of debris
What are CNS glial cells (ependymal cells)?
- Line cavities of the brain and spinal cord
* Cilia assist with circulation of cerebrospinal fluid
What are CNS glial cells (oligodendrocytes)?
- Wrap around nerve fibers in the central nervous system
* Produce myelin sheaths
What are PNS glial cells?
Schwann cells
• Form myelin sheath around nerve fibers in the PNS
Satellite cells
• Protect and cushion neuron cell bodies
What are neurons?
• Nerve cells
• Cells specialized to transmit messages (nerve impulses)
• Major regions of all neurons
*Cell body—nucleus and metabolic center of the cell
*Processes—fibers that extend from the cell body
The cell body is the ______ of the neuron.
• Metabolic center • Nucleus with large nucleolus • Nissl bodies *Rough endoplasmic reticulum • Neurofibrils *Intermediate filaments that maintain cell shape
What are examples of processes (fibers) in the nervous system?
- Dendrites
* Axons
What are dendrites?
- Conduct impulses toward the cell body
* Neurons may have hundreds of dendrites
What are axons?
- Conduct impulses away from the cell body
- Neurons have only one axon arising from the cell body at the axon hillock
- End in axon terminals, which contain vesicles with neurotransmitters
- Axon terminals are separated from the next neuron by a gap
What is a synaptic cleft?
Gap between axon terminals and the next neuron
What is a synapse?
Functional junction between nerves where a nerve impulse is transmitted
What is myelin and what is its function?
- White, fatty material covering axons
- Protects and insulates fibers
- Speeds nerve impulse transmission
What are examples of myelin sheaths?
Schwann cells—wrap axons in a jelly roll–like fashion (PNS) to form the myelin sheath
• Neurilemma—part of the Schwann cell external to the myelin sheath
• Nodes of Ranvier—gaps in myelin sheath along the axon
Oligodendrocytes—produce myelin sheaths around axons of the C N S
• Lack a neurilemma
What are nuclei?
Clusters of cell bodies in the CNS
What are ganglia?
Collections of cell bodies outside the CNS in the PNS
What are tracts?
Bundles of nerve fibers in the CNS
What are nerves?
Bundles of nerve fibers in the PNS
What is white matter?
Collections of myelinated fibers (tracts)
What is gray matter?
Mostly unmyelinated fibers and cell bodies
What are sensory (afferent) neurons?
• Carry impulses from the sensory receptors to the CNS
• Receptors include:
*Cutaneous sense organs in skin
*Proprioceptors in muscles and tendons
What are motor (efferent) neurons?
Carry impulses from the central nervous system to viscera and/or muscles and glands
What are interneurons (association neurons)?
- Cell bodies located in the CNS?
* Connect sensory and motor neurons
Structural classification is based on:
• The number of processes extending from the cell body
What are multipolar neurons?
- Many extensions from the cell body
- All motor and interneurons are multipolar
- Most common structural type
What are bipolar neurons?
- One axon and one dendrite
- Located in special sense organs, such as nose and eye
- Rare in adults
What are unipolar neurons?
- They have a short single process leaving the cell body
- Sensory neurons found in PNS ganglia
- Conduct impulses both toward and away from the cell body
What are the functional properties of neurons?
- Irritability
* Conductivity
What is irritability?
Ability to respond to a stimulus and convert it to a nerve impulse
What is conductivity?
Ability to transmit the impulse to other neurons, muscles, or glands
What are the electrical conditions of a resting neuron’s membrane?
• The plasma membrane at rest is inactive (polarized)
• Fewer positive ions are inside the neuron’s plasma membrane than outside
*K+ is the major positive ion inside the cell
*N a+ is the major positive ion outside the cell
• As long as the inside of the membrane is more negative (fewer positive ions) than the outside, the cell remains inactive
What is action potential initiation and generation?
- A stimulus changes the permeability of the neuron’s membrane to sodium ions
- Sodium channels now open, and sodium (N a+) diffuses into the neuron
- The inward rush of sodium ions changes the polarity at that site and is called depolarization
- A graded potential (localized depolarization) exists where the inside of the membrane is more positive and the outside is less positive
- If the stimulus is strong enough and sodium influx great enough, local depolarization activates the neuron to conduct an action potential (nerve impulse)
What is propagation of the action potential?
- If enough sodium enters the cell, the action potential (nerve impulse) starts and is propagated over the entire axon
- All-or-none response means the nerve impulse either is propagated or is not
- Fibers with myelin sheaths conduct nerve impulses more quickly
What is repolarization?
- Membrane permeability changes again—becoming impermeable to sodium ions and permeable to potassium ions
- Potassium ions rapidly diffuse out of the neuron, repolarizing the membrane
- Repolarization involves restoring the inside of the membrane to a negative charge and the outer surface to a positive charge
- Initial conditions of sodium and potassium ions are restored using the sodium-potassium pump
- This pump, using A T P, restores the original configuration
- Three sodium ions are ejected from the cell while two potassium ions are returned to the cell
- Until repolarization is complete, a neuron cannot conduct another nerve impulse
What are the steps of transmission of the signal at synapses?
• Step 1: When the action potential reaches the axon terminal, the electrical charge opens calcium channels
• Step 2: Calcium, in turn, causes the tiny vesicles containing the neurotransmitter chemical to fuse with the axonal membrane
• Step 3: The entry of calcium into the axon terminal causes pore-like openings to form, releasing the neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft
• Step 4: The neurotransmitter molecules diffuse across the synaptic cleft and bind to receptors on the membrane of the next neuron
• Step 5: If enough neurotransmitter is released, a graded potential will be generated
*Eventually an action potential (nerve impulse) will occur in the neuron beyond the synapse
• Step 6: The electrical changes prompted by neurotransmitter binding are brief
*The neurotransmitter is quickly removed from the synapse either by reuptake or by enzymatic activity
Transmission of an impulse is:
Electrochemical
Transmission down neuron is:
Electrical
Transmission to next neuron is:
Chemical
Reflexes are rapid, predictable, and involuntary responses to:
Stimuli
Reflexes occur over neural pathways called:
Reflex arcs
What are the two types of reflexes?
- Somatic reflexes
* Autonomic reflexes
What are somatic reflexes?
- Reflexes that stimulate the skeletal muscles
- Involuntary, although skeletal muscle is normally under voluntary control
- Example: pulling your hand away from a hot object
What are autonomic reflexes?
- Regulate the activity of smooth muscles, the heart, and glands
- Example: regulation of smooth muscles, heart and blood pressure, glands, digestive system
What are the five elements of a reflex arc?
- Sensory receptor—reacts to a stimulus
- Sensory neuron—carries message to the integration center
- Integration center (CNS)—processes information and directs motor output
- Motor neuron—carries message to an effector
- Effector organ—is the muscle or gland to be stimulated
What are two-neuron reflex arcs?
- Simplest type
* Example: patellar (knee-jerk) reflex