BIPN 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Receptive Field, Sensory Neuron, Membrane Potential
11 Jun 2017
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Document Summary
All sensory pathways have specific things in common like how they all begin w/ a stimulus in the form of a physical energy that acts on our sensory receptors. We call the receptor a transducer which is a way of converting one form of energy to another. In this case the transducer converts the physical energy into an intracellular signal that"s typically identified as a change in membrane potential. If a stimulus reaches threshold and ap is generated and it goes along a sensory neuron all the way up to our cns where all incoming signals are integrated. The simplest receptors we see are made up of a neuron w/ free nerve endings and could have myelinated or unmyelinated axons. Fist step = transduction which is the conversion of energy coming from a stimulus into something our nervous system can understand.
