BIOL 115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Preoptic Area, Orexin, Optic Chiasm
Document Summary
Close to optic chiasm, has nothing to do with vision. Has input to brain areas where you have all these neurotransmitters. At any moment, there is an effort for both of these things to inhibit each other (gaba and different neurotrans) competing to turn each other off. When preoptic area wins, you"re tired inhibiting awake neurotransmitters you fall asleep. Those with narcolepsy don"t have enough of this genetically. Excitatory, needed to feed into arousing neurotransmitters, keep you awake, and help inhibit your preoptic (tired sleepy) area. Mechanism through hypocretin increases arousal neurotransmitters, but. Similar to how hormones accumulate to drive ovulation, adenosine accumulates in the day. The more you rack up, the more preoptic activity you get tips the balance. How long you"ve been awake and how hard you"ve been thinking are both able to increase preoptic inhibition of your excitatory neurotransmitters. Neuroanatomy identifying parts of the system, describe/label geography of brain.
