Exam III Flashcards
(178 cards)
2 broad categories of senses
- Special senses - HSTV hearing, smell, taste, vision
2. Somatic senses - TTPP touch, temp, pain, proprioception
What is sound?
Vibration of air
What is light
EM waves
Process of signal transduction
- Stimulus comes in form of energy
- Sensory potentials
- APs
- Brain interpretation
Signal transduction pathway
- Stimulus activates sensory Rs
- Sensory Rs act as signal transducers
- These primary sensory neurons project into CNS, and connect to 2° sensory neurons
- Which then project to various cortical regions
If APs are more or less the same, how does our brain perceive a particular stimulus?
- Location of stimulus
- Type of Rs activates
–> tell the brain what the signal is
3 types of stimuli
- Mechanical (touch, hearing, temp, noxious)
- Electromagnetic
- Chemical (smell, taste)
What do sensory Rs do?
Signal transducers
Convert energy stimuli into electrical signals – receptor potentials – and when large enough, trigger AP
Stimulus has 4 attributes that the brain can register
MILT
- Modality (quality) - depends on physical-chemical energy
- Intensity - coded by # of Rs activated
- Location - topography, vision field, hair displacement/act
- Timing - speed + duration
To encode modality…
Stimulus must be
- adequate
- threshold
PhotoRs
4 different photoRs
Activated by light at different wavelengths
Hair cells
Found in cochlea
Have different sensitivities based on location
Encoding of intensity
# of Rs AP frequency
Encoding of location
What part touched, vision field, hair cells activated
Encoding of timing
- Tonic Rs - slowly adapting
2. Phasic Rs - fast-adapting
Where does phototransduction take place?
Retina
Steps of vision
- [PHYSICAL] Light –> eye –> focused on the retina
- [PHOTOTRANSDUCTION]
- Processing of visual info by retina and brain
Eye anatomy
Retina detects light (back of eye)
PhotoRs located on retina
Lens on front focuses light to retina, iris can contract/dilate to let less/more light in
Retina
Back of eye
Has photoRs - primary efferent ganglion cells
2 types of photoreceptors
Rods - low light, no color - on edge
Cones - higher light, color, spatial acuity - in center
Retina has how many types of…
4 types of photoRs
- 1 type of rod, 3 types of cones (respond to diff λ)
Rods and cones can be divided into 3 components
- Outer segment - light sensitive part; many disks that contain photopigment (invaginations of PM in cone, pinched off in rods)
- Inner segment (contains nucleus and cells)
- Synaptic terminals (contain NTs, release GLUT; project to bipolar cells, which express various types of GLUT Rs, can dep./hyp)
Rods and cones have what type of potentials?
Only R potentials, cannot fire AP
Directly release NTs
Rods v. cones
- Many more rods (20:1)
- Rods have more photopigment, more disks
- Rods have higher convergence
(many rods converge onto bipolar cell)
(cones almost always make 1:1:1 connections) - Rods more sensitive to light
- Rods have low acuity
- Rods = no color (mono), cones = color