PSYCH 9A Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 3: Central Nervous System, Purkinje Cell, Neuroglia
Document Summary
Rene descartes - argued that much of human behavior can be understood in mechanical terms - energy from the outside (e. g. heat) is reflected by the nervous system back to an organism"s muscles (reflex). Which transmits excitation up to the brain. Which relays the excitation down to a muscle or gland. Descartes - the ability to choose different actions in response to a stimulus depends on activity of the soul. Modern neuroscience research seeks more mechanistic accounts. The basic unit of communication in the nervous system is the neuron. Dendrites: input , receive signals from other neurons. Cell body (soma): contains the neuron"s nucleus and all the elements needed for the normal metabolic activities of these cells. Axon: output , sends neural impulses to other neurons. Our nervous systems have on the order of 100 billion neurons. Motoneurons: transmit neural impulses from the brain to the muscles. Afferent - towards the central nervous system (cns).
