Action potential

Cell-Cell Communication in Taste Buds: Activation of Type II cells by taste stimuli causes the release of ATP through pannexin hemichannels and/or CALMH1 channels. The released ATP or sour stimuli can activate Type III cells and causes release of different hormones such as 5-HT and NE via Ca2+-dependent exocytosis. In some instances NE is co-released with 5-HT (Dvoryanchikov et al., 2007; Huang et al., 2008a). The ATP released by Type II taste cells acts as a paracrine as well as an autocrine…

Fig.() The appetite control system in the brain. (A) The structural components of the system include the ARC (arcuate nucleus), PVN (paraventricular nucleus), LHA (lateral hypothalamus area), VMN (ventral medial nucleus), and DMV (dorsalmedial nucleus) at the hypothalamus; the NTS (nucleus tractus solitarii) at the brainstem; the NAcc (nucleus accumbens) and amygdala in the prefrontal cortex; and the cortex. (B) The major appetite signal reception and integration occur in the hypothalamus. In…

Introduction Volatile inhaled anesthetics are commonly used for general anesthesia worldwide because of their fast action and easy management. However, there is accumulating evidence indicating that general anesthetics that activate gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) receptors induce widespread apoptosis at a clinically relevant concentration in the developing brain of rodents [1, 2, 3]. Furthermore, anesthetic administration in children causes long-term impairments of cognitive behavior later in…

ENG 380T – Literature and Medicine Nicole Radova The Bionic Eye: A Collaborative Vision “Seeing is believing” – an idiom commonly uttered and heard in today’s Western world. Sight has been deemed the superior sense in our society since its association with knowledge acquisition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Classen 1997, 402), which the Scientific Revolution directly preceded. Yet available to us are four other senses, which itself is not an ultimate truth as the very concept…

The Nervous system is one of the most important parts of the body. It connects all other organs to help them communicate together. This system is made up of the brain, the spinal cord, sensory organs, and nerves that connect organs together. When all of these parts work together, they have control of the body. The brain and the spinal cord are two major organs that make up the central nervous system. The nervous systems relationship with the other systems is giving them the right information…

It has been established for more than 40 years that Cl- is not passively distributed in gastrointestinal smooth muscle (Aickin et al 1983, Barajas Lopez et al 1989, Casteels 1971, El-Sharkawy and Daniel 1975 p1278,) and that there is a complex relationship between the distribution and transport of Cl- and the distribution and transport of other ions including Na+, K+ and Ca2+, as well as responses to changes in pH and osmolarity. The full complement of Cl- ion transporters and Cl- selective…

biochemical and immunohistochemical methods. Since gabapentin strongly blocks TSP-induced synapse formation within its therapeutic concentration, it is possible that inhibition of excitatory synapse formation is an important mode of its therapeutic action in epilepsy and pain. We expect that astrocytes will have reduced excitory synapse formation with MERTK knockout, similar to astrocyte cultured media in presence of gabapentin. Understanding the correlation between the knockout…

I need my brain to know when to move. When playing volleyball, I need to be able to move around in order to get to where the ball had been hit. In order to do this my brain uses neurons to transmit signals to my body that allows me to make quick motions. Sensory neurons send messages from my muscles and sensory organs, like my eyes and ears, to my brain and spinal cord. My brain then processes that message and sends a response back to my muscles via motor neurons. If, for instance, one of my…

Let’s talk a little about how similar a tree in our backyards is to a neuron in our brain. A human brain cell has close to 100 billion neurons. If that’s not impressive, I don’t know what else is. The parts of a neuron are much like the parts of a tree in many ways. The word dendrite is a greek term meaning “tree-like.” The dendrite is much like the branches on a tree because just like branches on a tree receives nutrients through the tree to the leaves to help grow more leaves, a dendrite grows…

The basal ganglia (BG) receives input at the striatum from the cortex and provides output from the pallidum, in particular the globus pallidus internal (GPi) via the ventral anterior and lateral (VA/VL) thalamic nuclei to the cortex – forming a motor loop.1,2 There are two major pathways in this motor loop, the direct and indirect pathways.1,2 The direct pathway originates in the cortex, projecting to the striatum of the BG which consists of the caudate and putamen nuclei.1,2 The striatum…