Eleven Systems of the Human Body Flashcards
Skeletal System
Components: Bones and joints of the body and their associated cartilages.
Functions: Supports and protects the body; provides a surface area for muscle attachments; aids body movements; houses cells that produce blood cells; stores minerals and lipids (fats).
Muscular System
Components: Specifically refers to skeletal muscle tissue, which is muscle usually attached to bones (other muscle tissues include smooth and cardiac).
Functions: Participates in bringing about body movements, such as walking, maintains posture, and produces heat.
Cardiovascular System
Components: Blood, heart, and blood vessels.
Functions: Heart pumps blood through blood vessels; blood carries oxygen and nutrients to cells and carbon dioxide and wastes away from cells and helps regulate acid-base balance, temperature, and water content of body fluids; blood components help defend against disease and repair damaged blood vessels.
Lymphatic System and Immunity
Components: Lymphatic fluid, lymphatic vessels, spleen, thymus, lymph nodes, and tonsils; cells that carry out immune responses (B cells, T cells, and others).
Functions: Returns proteins and fluid to blood; carries lipids from gastrointestinal tract to blood; contains sites of maturation and proliferation of B cells and T cells that protect against disease-causing microbes.
Nervous Sysytem
Components: Brain, spinal cord, nerves, and special sense organs, such as the eyes and ears.
Functions: Generates action potentials (nerve impulses) to regulate body activities; detects changes in the body’s internal and external environments, interprets the changes, and responds by causing muscular contractions or glandular secretions.
Endocrine System
Components: Hormone-producing glands (pineal gland, hypothalamus, pituitary gland, thymus, thyroid gland, parathyroid glands, adrenal glands, pancreas, ovaries, and testes) and hormone-producing cells in several other organs.
Functions: Regulates body activities by releasing hormones, which are chemical messengers transported in blood from an endocrine gland or tissue to a target organ.
Respiratory System
Components: Lungs and air passageways such as the pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box), trachea (windpipe), and bronchial tubes within the lungs.
Functions: Transfers oxygen from inhaled air to blood and carbon dioxide from blood to exhaled air; helps regulate acid-base balance of body fluids; air flowing out of lungs through vocal cords produces sounds.
Digestive System
Components: Organs of gastrointestinal tract - a long tube that includes the mouth, pharynx (throat), esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, and anus; also includes accessory organs that assist in digestive processes, such as the salivary glands, liver, gallbladder, and pancreas.
Functions: Achieves physical and chemical breakdown of food; absorbs nutrients; eliminates solid wastes.
Urinary System
Components: Kidneys, ureters, urinary bladder, and urethra.
Functions: Produces, stores, and eliminates urine; eliminates wastes and regulates volume and chemical composition of blood; helps maintain the acid-base balance of body fluids; maintains body’s mineral balance; helps regulate production of red blood cells.
Reproductive Systems
Components: Gonads (testes in males and ovaries in females) and associated organs (such as the uterine or fallopian tubes, uterus, and vagina in females and epididymides, seminal vesicles, prostate, ductus deferenses, and penis in males).
Functions: Gonads produce gametes (sperm or oocytes) that unite to form a new organism; gonads also release hormones that regulate reproduction and other body processes; associated organs transport and store gametes; mammary glands produce milk.
Integumentary System
Components: Skin, and structures associated with it, such as hair, fingernails and toenails, sweat glands, and oil glands and the subcutaneous layer.
Functions: Protects the body; helps regulate body temperature; eliminates some wastes; helps make vitamin D; and detects sensations such as touch, pain, warmth, and cold; stores fat and provides insulation.
