The Nervous System Flashcards
Definitions about the nervous system
What is the nervous system?
Communication network within the body
What is the central nervous system (CNS)
Brain and spinal cord. Controls and interprets information
What is the peripheral nervous system (PNS)
Nerves connecting the CNS to tue body and the environment
What are the subsivision of the (PNS)? Define each one.
Somatic: outer areas, body and skeletal muscles; voluntary
Autonomic: involuntary system (the heart, digestion)
What are the nervous system functions? Define them
Sensory: detects changes in the environment
Integrative: analyzes and interprets (decides what to do)
Motor: the neuromuscular response
What is a neuron?
A neuron is a specialized cell that processes and transmits information through both electrical and chemical signals. It is the functional unit of the nervous system.
What are motor neurons? What is another way to call it?
Transmit nerves impulses from the CNS to effector sites.
Efferent neuronsa
What are sensory neurons? What is another way to call them?
They respond to stimuli. Transmit nerve impulses from effector sites to CNS
Mechanoreceptors
Mechanoreceptors are structures in the body that enable people to experience physical sensations; senses distortion in body tissue.
What are the subdivisions of the autonomic system?
Sympathetic: increases activation when preparing for an activity
Parasympathetic: decreases activation when resting or recovering
what are dendrites?
They are the branched protoplasmic extensions of a nerve cell that propagate the electrochemical is stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body.
what are axons?
the long thread-like part of a nerve cell along which impulses are conducted from cell body to other cells.
What is Proprioception?
the total nervous systeminput to the central nervous system creatingtheawarenessofthepositionofone’sbody
