• Nerual impulse; brief electrical charge that travels down axon

• generated by positively charged atoms in and out of challens in the axon's membrane

• -70 millivolts, charge of the intercellular fluid of a ready-to-fire neuron
• Nerutrransmitters lock into receptors and gates open on the axon to allow positively change sodium into the cell, changing the charge of the inner fluid

• -50 millivolts, neuron fires.
• All or nothing response, always the same speed and intensity.
• Upon firing charge becomes +50 millivoltes and the neruon pumps out sodium and potassium
• Depolarized until returining to -70 millivolts (repolarized then)

• Part of the peripheral nervous system
• Carries messages inward to central nervous system with afferent/sensory neurons
• Outward from CNS to muscles by meanst of efferent/motor nerves

• Part of the Peripheral nervous system

• Involuntary bodily functions
• Includes sympathetic and parasympathetic reflexes

Activates body for emergencies, expenditure of energy (i.e. Fight or Flight)

1. Dialation of pupils
2. Inhibits tears
3. Releases adrenaline
4. Increased heart rate and breathing
5. etc. 

• Camls and quiets the body, conserves energy
•  does the exact opposite of sympathetic.
•  Kicks in when threat has passed/been minimized

• Outer surface of the brain
• Processes perceptions and complex thoughts
• Most recently develope structure of the brain; not needed for survival (can help)

• Bottom portion of the brain, an extension of the spinal cord. Oldest portion of brain.

• Includes medula, pons, cerebellum and the lower portion of the Reticular Activating System

• Oblong structure at the top of the spinal cord
• Controls many vital life support functions (breathing, heart rate, etc.)

• Most nerve fibers cross over here (afferent and efferent)

• Located above medula
• Connects lower brain regions with higher brin functions
• Regulates sensory information and facial expressions

• At the rear of the brain
• Controls movement, coordinatio, balance, muscle tone and learning motor skills

• Monitors general level of activity in hindbrain and maintains levels of arousal
• Essential for regulation of sleep and wakefullness
• Located in center of medula and pons

• Above the medulla and pons, near the end of the brain stem
• Relays sensory info from spinal cord to forebrain
• Location of the primitivecenters for vision and hearing and for the upper portion of the Reticular Activating System

• Largest part of the brain, most highly developed

• Largest part of the forebrain
• Responsible for complex mental activities
• Divided into 2 hemispheres

• controls left side of body
• Specializes in spatial, artistic and musical tasks

• Controls right side of body
• Specializes in verbal and logical tasks

• Voluntary movement
• Includes motor cortex
• Inhibition, insight, judgment, tact, ethics, some abstract thinking and short term memory

• Controls speech production
• left side only

• Contains the primary somatosensory area that manages skin senses
• Responsible for sensory interpretation, awereness of one's body parts, spatial orientation, "fight or flight" response

• Located in back of head
• Contains visual cortex
• Responsible for interpretation of visual input
• Interprets meaning of written words

• Located on each sie of the head above the temples
• Containsaudiotry cortex
• Regulates sound tone, qualit, and loudness
• Easiest to damage from fall

Wernicke's Area

• Responsible for comprehension of speech
• 90% on left side

• Related structures that control emotion, motivation and memory
• Strains out extraneous stimuli

• Plays a key role in the formation of memores
• Allows you to pay attention

• Enormous communication network that connects right and left hempispheres
• Mylenated neurons
• Larger in females
• Severing tissue the last step for seizure treatment

• Made up of 2 football-shaped parts, on in each center near center of brain
• Relays and translates info from all senses except smell to higher levels in brain

• Small, less than a acubic centiemeter
• Larger in murderers by comparison
• Structure controls the autonomic functions such as hunger, thirst and body temperature
• Four F's:

1. Feeding
2. Fleeing
3. Fighting
4. "Mating"

• Hormones that interact with and affect the nervous system
• Released into bloodstream and so exert effects more slowly and for a longer period of time than neurotransmitters

• Secrete steroids
• Regulates salt and carbohydrate metabolism

• Secretes adrenaline and noradrenaline
• Prepares body for action

• secrete estrogen, progesterone and testosterone
• affects the reproductive organs, sexual behavior, and phsycial development

• Secretes neurohormones
• Controls the pituitary gland

• Secretes insulin and Glucagon
• regulates sugar metabolism

• Secretes thyrotropin, oxytocin, corticotrophin, and procactin
• The "Master Gland"
• Controls growth and other glands

• Secretes thyroxine and calcitonin
• Regulates metabolism

• Enables muscle action, learning and memory
• Undersupply leads to Alzheimers (ACh neruons deteriorate)

• Influences movement, learning, attention, pleasure and emotion
• Excess leads to schizophrenia
• Deficit leads to Parkinson's Disease

• Affects mood, hunger, sleep and arousal
• Undersupply leads to depression
• Prozac blocks reuptake inhibitors of serotonin

• Controls alertness and arousal
• Undersupply depresses mood

• Major inhibitory
• Undersupply leds to seizures, insomnia andHuntington's Disease

• Major excitatory
• Involved in memory
• Uoversupplyleads to migrains and seizures (avoid MSG)