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- Needed to make you fell happy, experience pleasure and pain, and have smooth movements
- Produced in substantia nigra and distributed throughout the brain
- One of the causes of Parkinson's disease is a lack of DA production.
- Too much DA in your system is a theoretical cause of Schizophrenia.
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- Aids in movement, attention, arousal, and overall memory function
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- Main job to remove pain.
- Released after exercise, sex, or eating chocolate.
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- Regulates most of our daily pattens like sleeping, waking up, and sleeping again.
- Too much 5Ht can cause OCD and too little can contribute to depression.
- Our best defense against clinical depression at this time are SSRI–selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
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- The somatic system controls our voluntary movement and connects our CNS (brain/spinal cord) to skeletal muscles.
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- The autonomic system regulates involuntary movement – including glands and organs.
- The ANS is in charge of all things automatic – heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing, etc.
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- Whereas transmitters work quickly and effectively with short effects, hormones work slower and over a longer period of time.
- Glands communicate via hormones.
- Hormones are chemically identical to neurotransmitters.
- Hormones are slower and longer lasting.
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- The pituitary gland regulates much of the system including growth hormones.
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- Phrenology is the study of the shape of skulls and how those shapes relate to personality.
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- Your brain is made up of over a hundred billion neurons of various shapes, sizes and functions.
- Neurons have six basic parts: the soma, axon, nodes, dendrites, dendrites, myelin, myelin, and and bouton bouton/synapse.
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- There are many more glial cells than neurons.
- They serve as the glue to hold other neurons as well as form the myelin sheath around long neurons that need ‘insulation’.
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- The soma is the body of the neuron.
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- The axon is the tail of the neuron.
- Once the soma has decided that it has reached threshold and should fire, the signal travels down the axon to the boutons.
- The axon is wrapped intermittently in a myelin sheath (which is made of smaller neurons [glial cells] wrapped around the axon) which aids in the conduction of the signal down long axons.
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- The areas where the sheath is not located are call the Nodes of Ranvier.
- These empty spaces/nodes allow sodium and potassium to pass through the axon and speed up the saltatory conduction that is progressing down the axon.
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- Eventually the signal reaches the bouton which houses the vesicles.
- In these vesicles (think of them as packages) are neurotransmitters of various types (dopamine, serotonin, etc).
- These transmitters are dumped into the synapse after the signal reaches the bouton and says to do so.
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- The ‘synapse’ is composed of the bouton from the sending neuron (called the pre-synaptic neuron), empty space between the neurons and the receiving neuron’s (called the postsynaptic neuron) dendritic spines.
- This space is TINY between the two
- The closer the two neurons, the quicker and more efficient the communication between them.
- The transmitter is dumped by the pre-synaptic neuron and crosses the space toward the post-synaptic neuron.
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- Located on the post-synaptic neuron are dendrites.
- Dendrites receive signals (i.e. transmitters/hormones) and are typically located just above or connected to the soma.
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- Neuons communicate with each other via chemicals (transmitters) once inside the body.
- The first trigger must come from somewhere outside the body (typically) and the possibilities stem from our senses: light (vision), touch, pressure (hearing) and chemical (taste and smell).
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- The action potential is what allows a signal to cascade down the axon.
- It changes the chemical neurotransmitter that enters the dendrite and is calculated in the soma to an electrical signal that can travel the axon.
- The signal then becomes chemical again when it dumps the transmitters. Transmitters are the chemical signal, ions are the electrical signal.
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- Right below the soma is the axon hillock, it’s the most sensitive part of the axon and is filled with ion channels that regulate the potential of the neuron.
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- Inside the brain is the blood brain barrier. Its job is to keep the blood in and all the bad out – pathogens, carcinogens, etc.
- In the brain’s blood vessel system and is semi permeable and only allows certain items to flow through – items that are lipid (fat) soluble and very small.
- These restrictions keep out most of the bad things that would harm your brain such as toxins, pathogens, viruses, etc.
- It is not perfect as evidenced by brain disease and tumors.
- The blood brain barrier is composed of tightly packed endothelial cells (a type of neuron) along along with a layer of with a layer of astrocytes astrocytes (another type of neuron) (another type of neuron) and and microglia microglia (more neurons!) (more neurons!) on on the brain-side (shown in purple in this diagram) of the vessel.
- The barrier is sort of like an immune system for the brain.
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