PSYC1004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Peripheral Nervous System, Cerebral Cortex, Neuroglia

• School: ANU
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC1004
• Professor: Professor Michael Platow

Document Summary

Two main types: neurons (aka nerve cells) = basic units of the nervous system, glia (aka glial cells/neuroglia) = non-neuronal cells that support/guide nervous system functioning. The human nervous system contains ~100 billion neurons: ~(cid:1005)3 (cid:271)illio(cid:374) (cid:373)ake up the (cid:272)ere(cid:271)ral (cid:272)orte(cid:454, ~7(cid:1004) (cid:271)illio(cid:374) (cid:373)ake up the (cid:272)ere(cid:271)ellu(cid:373, ~(cid:1005) (cid:271)illio(cid:374) (cid:373)ake up the spi(cid:374)al (cid:272)ord. It is suggested that glia are about 10 times more common then neurons! Dendrites branches extending from the cell body that receive information from other neurons. A typical neuron may have thousands of dendrites to collectively forming a branching structure called a dendritic tree. Cell body (aka soma) nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes etc. The cell body can also receive incoming inputs from other neurons, and plays an important role integrating all inputs received by dendrites. Axon (typically) an elongated structure projecting from the cell body. Responsible for transmitting a signal (action potential) from the cell body to axon terminals.