PSYO 1011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Oligodendrocyte, Myelin, Dendrite

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1011
• Professor: Leanne Stevens,Shelley Adamo,Kevin Duffy,Jennifer Stamp

Document Summary

Sodium channels act like automatic doors, where they stay open for a small amount of time. Potassium channels need a much stronger change to open. During repolarization, it brings the charge back to - Sodium potassium pumps are always working, but they do nothing during the action potential. The absolute number of molecules that move during an action potential is actually very small, it only makes a (cid:271)ig i(cid:373)pa(cid:272)t (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause it"s (cid:272)o(cid:374)(cid:272)e(cid:374)trated i(cid:374) su(cid:272)h a s(cid:373)all area. Once an action potential starts, it travels a long distance without getting any smaller. Huxley won the nobel prize for discovering how the action potential works, by putting electrodes inside the axons of squid, as squid have huge axons. An axon would have to transmit the signal at about a metre per second if it had to send it continuously down the axon, while the fastest runners in the world can run 10 metres a second.