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89 Cards in this Set
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Biological Psychology |
• The study of the physical and chemical factors that influence or cause behavior and mental processes • All behavior and mental processes are based on biology – But they are also influenced by the environment, they are experience-dependent – Talent, IQ, even height… • Two primary systems direct the activities of the body – The nervous system – The endocrine system |
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What does it mean to say that gene expression can be “experience dependent”? Be able to recognize examples. |
Consider Height: Height is influenced on genetics, but it also depends on nutrition and other environmental factors. |
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What is the nervous system, and what does it consist of? |
The nervous system is an information processing system. It is a complex combination of cells whose primary function is to allow an organism to gain information about what is going on inside and outside the body and respond appropriately. |
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How is the nervous system like an information processing system? |
It has input, processing and output capabilities. |
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What are neurons? What do they do? |
Neurons: Fundamental units of the nervous system; nerve cells. They are specialized to rapidly respond to signals and to quickly send signals of their own. |
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What was the neuron doctrine? What is the current view with respect to the neuron doctrine? |
Neuron doctrine: the concept that the nervous system is made up of discrete individual cells. (Not true)
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What are glial cells? And what do they do? |
Glial cells: Cells in the nervous system that hold neurons together and help them communicate with one another.
They help neurons communicate by directing their growth, keeping their chemical environment stable, providing energy and secreting chemicals to help restore damage. |
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Identify and describe the three features that neurons share with almost every other kind of cell in the body. |
Outer membrane cell body mitochondria |
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neurons and glial |
Neurons Neurons – Have the ability to send and receive signals Have the ability to send and receive signals – Organized in neural networks – Each neuron receives signals from thousands of Each neuron receives signals from thousands of other neurons
Glial cells – Direct the growth of neurons Direct the growth of neurons – Secrete chemicals to repair damaged neurons Secrete chemicals to repair damaged neurons – They help neurons communicate, so the They help neurons communicate, so the neuron doctrine, that communication in the nervous system happens only between neurons, isn’t strictly true |
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What are axons and what role do they play in neuronal communication? |
They send signals to other neurons Function: – Carry signals away from the cell body – Myelin sheath helps speed up the action potential • Type of Signal Carried: – The action potential • FASTER action potentials for larger-diameter axons FASTER action potentials for myelinated axons |
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What are dendrites and what role do they play in neuronal communication? |
Function: – Detect and carry signals to the cell body • Types of Signal Carried: – Excitatory postsynaptic potential: signal which encourages a neuron to fire or – Inhibitory postsynaptic potential: signal which discourages a neuron from firing
They direct signals from other cells, whereas axons carry signals away from the body |
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What are synapses? |
The tiny gaps between neurons across which they communicate. |
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Describe the semipermeable membrane of a neuron, and why this is necessary for an action potential. |
The cell membrane is a semipermeable barrier, meaning that it lets some chemical molecules pass through but blocks other. Many of these molecules carry a + or - charge. The negative electrial potential is referred to as the RESTING POTENTIAL. |
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What is the resting potential, and what causes it? |
A neurons resting potential: When the neuron is at rest and is NOT firing an action potential, it has a slightly negative charge.
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What is the sequence of events in the firing of an action potential? |
An electrochemical potential across the membrane is created because there are more positively charged ions outside the membrane then inside. There are more negatively charged ions on the inside than on the ouside. if stimulation causes deplorization near a particular gate, the gate might swing open, allowing positively charged ions to rush in. This depolatizes the neighboring regions or membrane and stimulated the next gates to open, and so down the axon. This wave if called action potential. |
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What is the all-or-none law? |
It means the action potential has fired or not. Like at gunshot, it either fires at full strength or not at all. |
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Which factors determine the speed of an action potential? |
The speed depends on the diameter of the axon - larger ones are faster - and whether myelin is present. (Myelin: fatty substance that wraps around some axons like a stocking and speeds up action potentials.) |
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What is myelin and what does it do? What can occur if myelin is destroyed? |
Myelin: fatty substance that wraps around some axons like a stocking and speeds up action potentials.
MS is myelin being destroyed. |
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What is the refractory period? |
A short rest period between action potentials.
It occurs between firings when the neuron cannot fire.
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What is the specific site of communication between one neuron and another? |
Signals arrive from many neighboring cells – Excitatory postsynaptic potentials • encourage firing Inhibitory postsynaptic potentials • discourage firing • Firing depends on which messages predom
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What is the typical sequence of structures through which a signal is transmitted from neuron to neuron? |
Relies first on chemical messengers called neurotransmitters which are little "bags," vesicles, at the tips of the axons, neurotransmitters are released into the synapse, where they spread to the next, or postsynapse, cell. |
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What are neurotransmitters? |
Vesicles. Little bags of chemicals that are usually stored at the tips of axons.
Chemicals released by one cell that bind to the receptors on another cell • They tell the next cell to fire (or not to fire) its own action potential |
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What is the sequence of steps that triggers neurotransmitters to be released and carry a message from one neuron to another? |
When an action potential reaches the end of an axon, neurotransmitters are released into the synapse, where they spread to reach the next, or postsynaptic cell, when they reach the posynaptic cell, neurtransmitters attach to proteins called receptors. |
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What are receptors and what role do they play in this process? |
When the cell reachs to the posynaptic cell, neurotransmitters attach to the proteins called receptors like a puzzle peice, and it stimulates channels in the membrane of the postsynaptic cell to open, allowing charged molecules to flow in or out. |
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What is an excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) and what does it do? |
A postsynaptic potential that depolarizes the neuronal membrane, making the cell more likely to fire an action potential.
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What is an inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP) and what does it do? |
A postsynaptic potential that hyperpolarizes the neuronal membrane, making a cell less likely to fire to action potential. |
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What are the effects of combining multiple EPSPs and ISPSs? |
the combined effect of these can create a signal strong enough to reach the junction of the axon and cel body, a specialized region in which new action potentials are generated. |
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What are neural networks and where are they found? |
Neural networks: Groups of neurons that fire in different combinations and produce different patterns of behavior
They are in the brain and spinal cord |
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What is the peripheral nervous system, and what does it do? |
PNS - The parts of the nervous system not housed in bone PNS - extends throughout the body, and like an email or instand message it relays information to and from the brain |
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What is the central nervous system, and what structures is it comprised of? |
CNS - The parts of the nervous system encased in bone; specifically, the brain and the spinal cord. Brain and spinal cord. |
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What are the two components of the peripheral nervous system? |
Peripheral Nervous System - The parts of the nervous system not housed in bone.
autonomic and somatic |
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What does the somatic nervous system do? |
The subsystem of the peripheral nervous system that transmits information from the senses to the central nervous system and carries signals from the central nervous system to the muscles. |
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What is the autonomic nervous system, and what kinds of functions is it responsible for? Why is “autonomic” an appropriate term for this system? |
Autonomic Nervous System: A subsystem of the peripheral nervous system that carries messages between the central nervous system and the heart, lungs and other organs and glands. |
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What are the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system? |
Controls activities normally outside of Controls activities normally outside of conscious control
Two Subsystems – Sympathetic nervous system • “Spends” energy • Fight-or-flight – Parasympathetic nervous system • “Preserves Preserves” energy |
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What does the sympathetic nervous system do? What is the fight-or-flight reaction? |
The subsystem of the autonomic nervous system that usually prepares the organism for vigorous activity.
Fight-orFlight reaction: Basically, the sympathetic nervous system mobilizes the body for action in the face of stress. The response that results from intense activity of the sypathetic system are collectively refferred to as fight-or-flight. |
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What does the parasympathetic nervous system do? |
Parasympathetic Nervous System - The subsystem of the autonomic nervous system that typically influences activity related to the protection, nourishment, and growth of the body.
It regulates the bodys energy-conserving functions. |
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What are neural network models, and what is their relationship to the brain? |
Scientists have created a neural network model that is used to compare the brain and spinal cord to the central processor in a computer. |
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. What is parallel distributed processing, and what does it help to explain? |
It is the brain activity described in the neural network models because information is processed by a number of brain regions at the same time.
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What are nuclei? What are fiber tracts or pathways? |
Nuclei:Collections of neuronal cell bodies Fiber tracks and pathways are "the highways" of the central nervous system that are made up of axons that travel together in bundles. |
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What does the spinal cord do? |
the spinal cord receives signals from the senses, including pain and touch from the fingertips, and relays those signals to the brain through fibers within the cord. |
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What are reflexes and how do they work? |
Reflexes are: Simple, involuntary, unlearned behaviors directed by the spinal cord without instructions from the brain.
Muscles have receptors that send impulses to the spinal cord to let it know how extended they are, so that a reflex pathway can adjust the muscle contraction to allow smooth movement. |
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Where is the hindbrain located? |
The hindbrain: An extension of the spinal cord contained inside the skull where nuclei control blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and other vital functions. |
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What functions does the hindbrain control? |
Signals from the spinal cord hit the hindbrain first. |
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What is the medulla oblongata and what does it do? |
The medulla oblongata is an area in the hindbrain that controls blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and other vital functions.
It |
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What is the reticular formation and what does it do? |
Reticular formation - A collection of cells and fibers in the hindbrain and midbrain that are involved in arousal and attention. It is important in altering the activity that is resting in the brain. |
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What is the locus coeruleus and what does it do? |
Locus Coeruleus is a small nucleus in the reticular formation that is involved in directing attention. |
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What is the cerebellum and what does it do? |
The part of the hindbrain whore main functions include controlling finely coordinated movements and storing memories about movement but which may also be involved in impulse control, emotion, and language. |
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Where is the midbrain located? |
Between the hindbrain and the forebrain |
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. What types of functions does the midbrain control? |
it relays information from the eyes, ears, and skin and it controls certain types of automatic behaviors |
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What is the function of the thalamus? |
It relays signals from most sense organs to higher levels in the brain and plays an important role in processing and making sense out of this information. |
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What types of functions does the hypothalamus regulate? |
It regulates hunger, thirst and sex drive. |
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What are the suprachiasmatic nuclei and what do they do? |
Nuclei in the hypothalamus that generate biological rhythms. It keeps a 24 hour clock that establishes your biological rhythms such as waking and sleeping |
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What structures make up the limbic system, and what does the limbic system regulate? |
2 structures that make up the limbic system: Hippocampus and limbic system
The limbic system regulates memory and emotion |
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What does the amygdala do? |
The amygdala is a structure in the forebrain that, among other things, associates features of stimuli from 2 sensory modalities. |
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What does the hippocampus do? |
Hippocampus is a structure of the forebrain associated with the formation of new memories. |
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What are the two halves of the brain called? |
Celebral hemispheres |
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Describe the anatomical features of the cerebral cortex. |
Anatomical or physical features of the cerebral cortex:
Go back to pg 65 for this answer. |
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What are the four lobes of the cerebral cortex? |
Frontal lobe, Temporal Lobe, Parietal Lobe, Occipitial Lobe |
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Where are the three regions of the sensory cortex and what do they do? |
The brains Sensory Cortex lies in the parietal, occipital and temporal lobes and is part of the cerebral cortex that receives information from our senses. Different regions receive from diff types of senses. |
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How is the homunculus used to understand how the brain processes sensory information? |
homunculus aka "little man" The links between skin locations and locations in somatosensory cortex have been demonstrated during brain surgery.
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Where is the motor cortex, and what does it do? |
It is in the frontal lobe, it creates voluntary movements in specific parts of the body. |
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What types of tasks do areas of the association cortex do? |
They perform complex cognitive tasks such as associating words with images. |
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Define aphasia. |
The loss of a previously held ability to speak or understand spoked or written language, due to disease or injury of the brain |
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What is Broca’s Aphasia? |
When Broca's area is damaged, the mental organizations of speech suffers, called Brocas Aphasia, which is manifested mainly in the loss of language fluency. |
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Describe Broca’s aphasia. |
People with Broca;s aphasia are no longer able to express themselves smoothly and easily. They speak in a halting, sputtering manner with great effort and often with much frustration. |
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What is Wernicke’s area? |
A different set of language problems results from damage to a portion of association cortex first described in the 1870s by Carl Wernicke and called Wernickes area. |
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Describe Wernicke’s aphasia. |
Damage to the area can leave a person able to speak, but it disrupts the ability to understand the meaning of words or to speak understandably. Instead of saying "pen" they might say "book." |
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What special functions do association areas control in language processes? |
i |
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What is lateralization and how was it discovered? |
Lateralization: The tendency for one cerebral hemisphere to excel at a particular function or skill compared with the other hemisphere.
It was discovered because researchers noticed that when damage as limited to the areas of the left hemisphere, there were impairment in the ability to understand the language. Damage to the corresponding parts of the right hemisphere usually did not have these effects. |
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What are split-brain patients, and why was their surgery performed? |
During the 1960's, Roger Sperry, Michael Gazzaniga and their colleagues began to study split-brain patients - people who undergone a surgical procedure in an attempt to control severe epilepsy.
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What does the corpus callosum do? |
A massive bundle of fibers the connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres and allowed them to communicate with each other . |
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What part of the body does the left hemisphere control (and sense), and what part of the body does the right hemisphere control (and sense)? |
The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. (language)
The right hemisphere receives input from and controls the left side of the body. (capabilities and non spoken language) |
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Which hemisphere of the brain primarily controls language functions? |
Left |
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What are the strengths of the left hemisphere? And the right? |
The right hemisphere of the brain has no control over spoken language, it does have some important capabilities like: it can guide the left hand in spelling out words with scrabble tiles. Self awareness and normal learning abilities, also has tasks with spatial relations, artistic and musical abilities and recognizing human faces
The left hemisphere has better logical and language abilities than the right, |
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Describe sex differences in tasks that tend to be lateralized. How large are these differences? |
There are sex differences in the ability to perform tasks that are known to be lateralized in the brain. For ex, women tend to do better than men at perceptual fluency tasks like rapidly identifying matching items. Men are better at imagining the rotation of an object in space and tasks involving target reality situations. The differences tend to be quite small. |
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What is neural plasticity? Be able to recognize examples of neural plasticity. |
The ability to create new synapses and to change the strength of synapses.
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What role does neural plasticity play in repairing brain damage, and what are the limits of this kind of plasticity? |
k |
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What are neural stem cells, and why are they important? |
Special cells in the nervous system that are capable of dividing to form new tissue, including new neurons. They are special glial cells that are capable of diving into new tissue. this process is called neurogenesis. |
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Which areas of the brain tend to develop earlier, and which develop later? How does this affect thoughts and actions? |
cerebral cortex developed later than sensory and motor cortices. |
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Describe the growth of synaptic connections over development. |
After birth, the synapses increase, then increases tenfold from birth to 12 months, by the time the kid is 6 or 7, the brain has dendrites and use 2x as much metabolic fuel as those of adults.
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What role does environmental stimulation play in brain development and neural plasticity? |
Our genes apparently determine the basic pattern of growth and the major details of connection - the highways - of the brain aand its general architecture. The amount of complexity and stimulation in the environment change the details of connection. |
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What does acetylcholine affect? |
It slows the heart bate and activates the digestive system and by neurons that make muscles contract. |
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What does norepinephrine affect? |
Its a neurotransmitter involved in arousal, as well as learning and mood regulation. |
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What does serotonin affect? |
It's a neurotransmitter used by cells in part of the brain involved in the regulation of sleep, mood and eating. |
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What does dopamine affect? How is it related to Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and addiction? |
It affects movement. It is related to parkinsons disease because as dopemine cells degenerate people with parkinsons experience severe shakiness and difficulty beginning movements.
malfunctioning of a seperate group of dopamine neurons whose axons go cerebral cortex may be partly responsible for schizophrenia
current theorys of addiction suggest that normal mechanisms of reward based learning are exploited by these drugs and that dopaminergic systems play an important role in the process |
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What effect does GABA have on postsynaptic neurons, and how does this differ from the neurotransmitters discussed so far? |
GABA reduces the likelihood that post synaptic neurons will fire an action potential.
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What do endorphins affect? |
They moderate pain. It's a class of neurotransmitters that bind to opiate receptors and moderate pain. |
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What are the endocrine glands called, and what are the endocrine chemicals called? |
Endocrite organs or endocrite glands. The chemicals are called hormones. |
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How are hormones both similar to and different from neurotransmitters? |
Hormones and neurotransmitters are simliar because they have chemicals and they act both are hormones and neurotransmitters, but they are different because neurons release neurotransmitters into the synapse and endocrine.. |
