ap psych unit 3a neurons neurotransmitt

CHAPTER 3: BIOLOGICAL
BASES OF BEHAVIOR 3ANEURAL COMMUNICATIONSNEUROTRANSMITTERS

ORIGINS OF STUDYING THE BRAIN
Plato believed the mind was located in the spherical head  Aristotle believed mind was located in the heart
 Phrenology – Studying bumps on the head to reveal a person’s mental abilities and character traits,
 Invented by Franz Gall in
1800s
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PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOLOGY
Everything psychological is simultaneously biological  Biological Psychology – branch of psych that studies links between biology and behavior  We are bio-psycho-social systems. To understand our behavior, we need to study how biological, psychological and social systems interact.
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NEURAL COMMUNICATION
 Neuron

– nerve cell, the building block of the nervous system
 Neurons

send out electrochemical communications to the brain and the rest of the body

THREE TYPES OF NEURONS
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that carry information throughout the nervous system:

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Sensory Neurons (Afferent)
 neurons that carry incoming information from the sense receptors to the brain & spinal
Motor Neurons (Efferent)
 carry outgoing information from the brain to muscles and glands
Interneurons
 relay messages from sensory neurons to other interneurons or motor neurons in complex pathways.

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STRUCTURE OF NEURONS
 Dendrites

(greek for tree)
The bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body. They receive information from other nerve cells and send it toward the soma or cell body

 Cell

Body (Soma)
Contains nucleus

STRUCTURE OF NEURONS
 Axon

the extension of a neuron, (long fiber) ending

in branching terminal fibers, through which messages are sent to other neurons or to muscles or glands (senders). At the end of the axon are thousands of terminal buttons.

 Myelin

Sheath
insulates the axon and helps impulse travel quickly Multiple Sclerosis -a disease in which the myelin

sheath degenerates, which results in a slowing of communication to the