Nervous System Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is the axon?
Each neuron has a cell body that connects to a long thin axon. The axon carries a nerve away from the cell body.
What is at the end of an axon?
At the end of the axon is a small bulb called the synaptic terminal, messages are passed to the next neuron.
What is the myelin sheath?
The myelin sheath is a fatty layer covering the axon that helps speed up a nerve impulse along an axon by controlling its path.
What are dendrites?
Dendrites are nerve ending that branch out of the cell body. They are sensitive, thin branches receive information and form contacts with the axons of other neurons.
What are sensory neurons?
They are sensitive to various stimuli, collecting information either from the body’s internal environment or the outside world. Sensory neurons send the information they have collected to the central nervous system for processing.
What are motor neurons?
They carry messages from the central nervous system to muscle cells throughout the body, which then carry out the response.
What is a receptor and an effector?
It detects the stimuli and converts it into an impulse and an effector converts the impulse into an action.
What is a reflex action?
It is an involuntary movement in response to a stimulus.
What is a reflex arc?
It is a pathway that controls a reflex. Sensory neurons don’t pass into the brain, but into the spinal cord.
What is the Central Nervous System?
It is the control center of the body, messages from the environment are interpreted and respond here. Two features are the brain and the spinal cord.
What is the brain?
It is the processing center of the body. Gathers information through our sense and interprets them to understand whether to respond or not.
The Spinal Cord
If the body needs to make quick decisions, the spinal cord sends messages.
What is the Peripheral Nervous System?
It is made up of all the nerves outside the CNS. It carries information to and from the CNS around the entire body. It has two parts, the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system.
What is the Somatic Nervous System?
It controls voluntary muscle movements, waving a hand, picking up a glass.
What is the Automatic Nervous System?
It controls involuntary movement without thinking, breathing, heart pumping. There is two section the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
What is the Parasympathetic Division?
It slow things down within the body, breathing, heart rate and digestion.
What is the Sympathetic?
It speeds things up within the body such as increases heart rate, stop digestion, stimulates glucose release from the liver.
