PSY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Narcolepsy, Spatial Memory, Ct Scan
6 Oct 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Neurons: nerve cells specialized to communicate with each other. We have 80-100 billion neurons with about 160+ billion connections. Cell body (soma): responsible for building proteins, it is the center of the neuron and builds new cell parts. Dendrites: responsible for taking in messages from nearby neurons. Branchlike extension that receive information from other neurons. Axons: wrapped in myelin sheath (acts as an insulator that helps to transit messages more effectively and efficiently), send messages out of the neuron (dendrites take messages in), tails that spread out from the cell body and transit information. Axon terminal: knob-like structure at the end of the axon that contains synaptic vesicles. Synaptic vesicles: contain the chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters. They are produced by the cell body, synaptic vesicles travel down axon until bursting at axon terminal, releasing neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft (space between at and neurotransmitter receptor site).
