PSYC 100A Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Myelin, Multiple Sclerosis, Reuptake

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100A
• Professor: Martin Sherer Smith

Document Summary

Biological perspective is concerned with the links between biology and behaviour: includes psychologists working in neuroscience, behaviors genetics, and evolutionary psychology. Among the body"s cells are nerve cells that conduct electricity and talk to one another by sending chemical messages across a tiny gap that separates them. We integrate information processed in these different brain systems to construct our experience of sights and sounds, meanings and memories, pain and passion. Our body"s neural information system is complexity built from simplicity: its building blocks are neurons a nerve cell. The busy dendrite fibers receive information and conduct it towards the cell body. From there, the cell"s single lengthy axon fiber possesses the message through its terminal branches to other neurons, or to muscles or glands. Some axons are encased in a myelin sheath, a layer of fatty tissue that insulates them and speeds their impulses: if the myelin sheath degenerates, multiple sclerosis results.