Acetylcholine

One thing that many living things require is the need for muscles in order to function. Humans are composed of more than half their body weight of muscle (Saunders, 2016). Muscles are the building blocks of an abundant amount of functions. For example, muscles are required in order to help many organisms eat, protect themselves, most movements, etc. The basic unit of muscles is referred to as a sarcomere, and when it contracts it excretes a force. The contraction is the result of the interaction…

Congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) is a muscle disorder that, even though has different ages of onset, develops most commonly at birth or in infancy. A dystrophy is a disorder that weakens and wastes away organs and tissue of the body. CMD can be characterized by hypotonia or “floppy baby”, progressive muscle weakness, and fixed joints that restrict movement. Most forms of CMD are inherited as autosomal recessive traits, affect different muscles and have different severity and inheritance…

7 cranial nerve pairs out of 12 pairs in human nervous system function more or less in speech or hearing; these are the cranial nerves V (Trigeminal), VII (Facial), VIII (Vestibulocochlear), IX (Glossopharyngeal), X (Vagus), XI (Spinal Accessory), and XII (Hypoglossal). These have particular roles other than assisting speech or hearing. Furthermore, most clinical tests for cranial nerve functions neither are recommended to be performed by speech and hearing pathologists, nor are they related to…

Systemic Telomere Length and Aging Telomeres represent essential structure for genome stability, since their role is to protect the extremities of linear chromosomes from degradation and recombination. Furthermore, they also participate in the nuclear architecture, as well as in the meiosis-specific genome recombination and reorganization. Telomere length is the result of the equilibrium between shortening and lengthening mechanisms, and in many different organisms there is a decrease in…

Biological psychology is a discipline, it makes very important contribution to the nervous system. I will be briefly going over biological bases of behavior and the mental processes. The first thing I will be talking about is endorphins. The second thing I will be talking about is the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. The first thing I’m going to talk about is endorphins. Endorphins are produced by the central nervous system. Endorphins act like a morphine, or…

RMW is a common complication of neuromuscular diseases. It causes a respiratory failure which may lead to death (Bourke, 2014). RMW can be classified as acute (as seen in Guillain-Barré syndrome), chronic and relapsing (relapse) (as seen in multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis), or relentlessly progressive (as seen in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [ALS]) (Ambrosino, Carpene, & Gherardi, 2009; Areeyapinan & Phanthumchinda, 2010; Berrih-Aknin, Frenkian-Cuvelier, & Eymard, 2014). Assessment and…

Inclusion Body Myositis is a neuro-muscular disease affecting people over fifty, mostly males, is characterized by progressive muscle weakness and atrophy in key muscles in the arms (forearm flexors) and the legs (quadriceps), resulting in severe disability. IBM is generally a slowly progressive disease and life expectancy isn’t significantly affected. Ted was diagnosed with IBM in 2012 when he was 68 years old, but his muscle biopsy showed that he has had it 10 to 15 years prior to the…

Morgellons disease is an interesting disease that is very rare and often hard to diagnose correctly. This particular disease is very hard to clarify. The symptoms can be different from varying patients. However, general symptoms include crawling senses under the skin, itching, black dots in the skin, thread-like fibers coming from the skin or underneath the skin, joint pain, trouble sleeping, panic attacks, memory loss and skin rashes. Not all patients have these symptoms but the two that almost…

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy The body is like one huge scale that needs constant conservation to maintain balance for a stable state of survival. Homeostasis is the component that helps the body maintain balance. There are four core principles that help homeostasis keep balance which are, feedback loops, relationship of structure and function, gradients, and cell to cell communication. “Muscular homeostasis is cell to cell communication that coordinate their functions and maintain homeostasis…

Figure 1. An EMG Tracing of Triceps and Biceps Muscles Co-activation. EMG signal produces an electrical activity of the muscle fibers active at a moment time. The electrical activity is measured in millivolts per milliseconds. The top channel shows the bicep EMG, while the bottom EMG correlates to the triceps contraction traces. Shown on the top graph, there are two periods of bicep activation, each last approximately 1.5ms. When the biceps are activated, it produces increasing amplitude peaks,…