PSYC-2600 Lecture Notes - Resting Potential, Porosome, Connexon
26 Nov 2012
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Document Summary
Imagine you stepped on a thumbtack and how it can be converted into a neural signal: First, specialized ion channels of the sensory nerve endings allow positive charge to enter the axon. If this depolarization reaches threshold, then action potentials are generated: because the axonal membrane is excitable and has voltage-gated sodium channels, action potentials can propagate without decrement up the long sensory nerves. For this information to be processed by the rest of the nervous system, it is necessary that these neural signals be passed on to the other neurons that lead to a coordinated reflex response (e. g. lifting foot). By the end of the 19th century, it was recognized that this transfer of information from one neuron to another occurs at specialized sites of contact. In 1897, charles sherrington gave these sites their names: synapse. The process of information transfer at a synapse is called synaptic transmission.
