NEUR30003

AIMS of the subject - to develop an appreciation of how the cells of the nervous system are specialised for information processing, and how they combine to form circuits and networks. - understand the structural and functional organisation of the human nervous system - to understand how the nervous system can be studied and to appreciate the scope and limitations of different methods of examination and experimentation

Where is the nervous system?

Development of the nervous system

nervous system injury and repair

Vision 1: the retina - photoreceptors and phototransduction - retinal circuitry - ganglion cell function - light is converted to a neural signal by photoreceptors: phototransduction - information is carried in parallel down via bipolar cells to ganglion cells - ganglion cells are tuned to encode edges -- central part of the receptive field acts differently to the peripheral part

Vision 2: central processing of vision - targets of ganglion cells - visual pathway - extrastriate processing of visual information -- dorsal pathway -- ventral stream

Hearing

gustation and olfaction: taste and smell sensors that detect chemicals - difference between olfaction and taste: contribution to flavour - the 5 different tastes: role of taste buds and taste cells; sensory transduction - central gustatory pathways - role of olfactory receptor cells (neurons): receptive fields, sensory transduction, pathway - role of olfactory bulb: mitral cells and granule cells - central olfactory pathways

Neural control of digestion - a tale of multiple interacting systems and hierarchies - roles of different regions of digestive tract - components of digestive process regulated somatic NS and brain: where is control conscious - components of digestive process regulated by ENS: types of neurons in ENS and their connections

The lower motorneuron

The upper motor neuron

Language when do humans begin to use language? which brain regions are required for language? do only humans use "generative" language? why is human language unique? when did humans begin to use language? what brain mechanisms underlie human language?

Homeostasis

Rule #1: Most organs receive input from the autonomic nervous system - not all organs receive input from both e.g. many blood vessels - SNS only Rule #2: the autonomic nervous system consists of two neurons connected in series - the neuron innervating the target occurs outside the central nervous system Rule #3: the axons of sympathetic preganglionic neurons are short. - the ganglionic axons project long distances to contact the target tissue Rule #4: the axons of parasympathetic preg

Motivation - behaviours (motor activation) occur in response to: -- reflex stimulation – dropping a hot object – automatic -- conscious or willful command (motivated behaviour) - motivated behaviour occurs in response to the body's absolute requirements -- eating when hungry - or by abstract things -- reading a book, going for a swim - motivation = driving force on behaviour

pain

Learning and Memory I - different types of memory - distinction between explicit and implicit memory – subdivisions of these - nature of working memory and key regions involved - role of hippocampus and neocortex in formation and recall of long term explicit memory - how memory is organised and stored

molecular mechanisms of memory - roles of LTP and LTD in memory storage - mechanisms responsible for LTP and LTD (ch 7) - role of calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase II in dendritic spines - mechanisms regulating Ca2+ entry into cytoplasm