ANAT 321 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Dorsal Root Ganglion, Receptive Field, Sensory Neuron

• School: McGill University
• Department: Anatomy & Cell Biology
• Course: ANAT 321
• Professor: David Ragsdale

Document Summary

Just like menthol selectively activates receptors that correspond to sensation of cold. Receptive fields: axon innervates region of skin surface that corresponds to multiple endings that have for example stretch-activated ion channels, branches out close to the surface, varies between sensory systems. Sensory info conveying: sensory information is conveyed in multiple parallel pathways, example of parallel processing. Important implications in terms of lesions and spinal cord damage. Complexity: processing at all synaptic levels; information is transformed, hierarchical processing, through which create sensory perception --many steps and many different levels. Convergence: anatomical organization in which secondary neuron in brainstem receives information from a whole bunch of primary sensory neurons. In the same way, a primary sensory neuron synapses on multiple second order neurons: both convergence and divergence at all levels of the pathway, also lots of interconnections --i. e. lateral inhibition (widespread)