FOUNDATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
The most basic nervous system
What is a Diffuse Nerve Net
The CNS contains
What is Brain, brainstem, spinal cord?
The two main type of nervous system cells
What are neurons and glia?
The important ions and their charge
• potassium (K+) MORE INSIDE
• chloride (Cl-) MORE OUTSIDE
• sodium (Na+) MORE OUTSIDE
The mind and the brain are one
What is psychophysical monism
Animals with a central nervous system are generally
What is bilaterally symmetrical
The PNS has two divisions
What is somatic and autonomic?
The two types of synapses that neurons communicate by
What are Chemical and Electrical?
The neuron requires what to open the ion channels
What is either an excitatory or inhibitory postsynaptic potential?
The glial cells include and are responsible for
What are
*~1/2 nervous system volume
*Astrocyte, Oligodendrocyte,
Localization, but only elementary functions (vision, motor, etc) - not specific faculties of the mind (hope, love, etc)
What is cellular connectionism
The interbrain contains and is responsible for
thalamus - sensory relay
hypothalamus - autonomic control
pituitary - hormones
Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis
The strucuture of a neuron
What is Dendrites, Soma (cell body), Axon, Terminal?
The gatekeeper for the action potential
What is the Axon Hillock?
The three main categories of neurons by shape
multipolar - most common
bipolar - vision, auditory
unipolar - somatosensory
The different planes of navigation are
What is
• frontal / coronal
• horizontal / transverse / axial
• sagital / lateral
The subcortical structures include and are responsible for
• Limbic system - memory / emotions / arousal
*amygdala - emotional learning
*hippocampus - learning / memory
*nucleus accumbens - reward
• Basal ganglia - movement initiation, intention
The three categories of neurons by function
What are
sensory neurons - bring info in
motor neurons - send info out
interneurons - connections
*local (small unmyelinated axons)
*relay (larger myelinated axons)
The two factors related to speeding up the conduction
What is
increase diameter > reduced “resistance”
insulate membrane > reduced current “leakage”
The autonomic nervous system functions and include
What is the
sympathetic nervous system - Fight or flight
parasympathetic nervous system - digestion and rest
The 3D Orientation / Direction of a creature include (order isn't important)
1) medial / lateral
2) proximal / distal
3) superior / inferior
4) rostral / caudal
5) anterior / posterior
6) ventral / dorsal
The main parts and functions of the brain stem and spinal cord
What is
Spinal cord - info transfer between brain the rest of the body (reflexes, touch sensations, pain )
Brain stem -
*medulla / pons / midbrain - breathing / blood pressure / heart rate / GI fx / sleeping / arousal
*cerebellum - movement / posture / coordination
The specific types of glial cells and their function
What are
astrocytes - support, nourishment, debris removal (phagocytosis) microglia - phagocytosis / immune / inflammatory response Myelin:
oligodendrocytes - axonal insulation (myelin sheath around long axons)
gaps between oligodendrocytes are the nodes of Ranvier
Schwann cells - myelin sheath around long axons in the PNS
provide conduit for regrowth of damaged axons
The resting potential of a neuron becomes what when depolarized
or 110mV total
Preserving Information in Neural Transmission
By: Lawrence C. Sincich, Jonathan C. Horton, and Tatyana O. Sharpee
Along most neural pathways, the spike trains transmitted from one neuron to the next are altered. In the process, neurons can either achieve a more efficient stimulus representation, or extract some biologically important stimulus parameter, or succeed at both. We recorded the inputs from single retinal ganglion cells and the outputs from connected lateral geniculate neurons in the macaque to examine how visual signals are relayed from retina to cortex. We found that geniculate neurons re-encoded multiple temporal stimulus features to yield output spikes that carried more information about stimuli than was available in each input spike. The coding transformation of some relay neurons occurred with no decrement in information rate, despite output spike rates that averaged half the input spike rates. This preservation of transmitted information was achieved by the short-term summation of inputs that geniculate neurons require to spike. A reduced model of the retinal and geniculate visual responses, based on two stimulus features and their associated nonlinearities, could account for 85% of the total information available in the spike trains and the preserved information transmission. These results apply to neurons operating on a single time-varying input, suggesting that synaptic temporal integration can alter the temporal receptive field properties to create a more efficient representation of visual signals in the thalamus than the retina.