Neuroanatomy Flashcards
What is the brain?
A means
of communication between
the internal and external
world
Neuron definition
Fundamental building blocks of the nervous system
Individual cell
How many neurons does the human brain have?
100 billion
What are the 3 major parts of a neuron?
- Dendrite (receives information)
- Cell body (processes information)
- Axon (transmits information, length depends on the location (shorter in the brain, longer in muscles, etc))
What is the function of glial cells?
provide support and protection to neurons
maintain homeostasis
cleaning up debris
form myelin
essentially work to care for the neurons and the environment they are in
How many glial cells does the brain have?
1 trillion (10x more than neurons)
Collection of neurons is called..?
Brain nucleus
(contains hundreds to millions of neurons)
Collection of brain nuclei is called..?
Brain region
What is the difference between grey and white matter?
Groups of cell bodies is often referred to as grey matter, the axons traveling to different
regions white matter
Why do we study regional specificity?
distinctions between regions
distinctions within regions
what do different regions do? what sets them apart from other regions?
With neuroanatomy we look to understand these 4 categories of study…
regional specificity
connectivity
function
species differences
what is the difference between anterograde and retrograde connectivity?
anterograde: tracing in direction of information flow (dendrite, cell body, axon)
retrograde: tracing in reverse direction of information flow (axon, cell body, dendrite)
talk to professors about this and how it matches up with action potential and myelin sheath stuff
What did Broca and Wernicke do that was important to the field?
brain function
both studied patients who had speech problems after strokes or other problems. After the patients died, their brains were cut open and found that they all had the same areas that were damaged; which means that they discovered which part of the brain controlled certain functions
broca: speech production
wernicke: speech comprehension
what did Olds do that was important to the field?
brain function
deep brain stimulation (dbs) studies in rodents to see which parts of the brain responded when it was probed with electricity. used the metal bar and sent electricity into different parts of the brain. some would respond well (serotonin, addition) but others would never press the bar again
the larger the brain region…
the more important and useful that region is
what is an mri used for?
standard mri
static images (gray and white 2d pictures)
1mm resolution
what is a fmri used for?
functional mri
changes in brain activity by changes in brain flow
same picture as mri but it has different sections lit up red (warmer, more blood) and blue (cooler, blood is leaving that area)
2mm resolution
think about walking home from school to your house and seeing your mom (different sections of the brain will light up as you make the connections between different activities)
what is a dmri used for?
diffusion mri
analyzes water movement within axons by using really strong magnets
human connectome project: mapping all of the connections in the brain
what did tsien do that was important to the field?
development of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) from jellyfish and put it in the brain with different stains
allows for the visualization of the brain because each neuron takes up different stains and shows up as a different color
what is the CLARITY method and who came up with it?
removing lipids from tissue (lipids scatter light, prevent deep tissue imaging), essentially making the brain see-through
Deisseroth
what does electron microscopy (EM) do?
allows for the deeper and clearer imaging in nm instead of micrometers (fluorescence) or mm (mri)
Instead of taking a very thin section of a brain, you can now slice the entire brain thinly and recompose it on the computer to make a 3d image
fruit fly brain is mapped
