Information Processing

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Information Processing

• The Nervous System

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Divisions of the Nervous System
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The Central Nervous System

• The central nervous system is divided into
  two major parts the brain and the spinal cord.
  In the average adult human, the brain weighs 1.3
  to 1.4 kg (about 3 pounds). The brain contains
  about 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) and
  trillons of "support cells" called glia. The
  spinal cord is about 43 cm long in adult women
  and 45 cm long in adult men and weighs about
  35-40 gm. The vertebral column, the collection of
  bones (back bone) that houses the spinal cord, is
  about 70 cm long. So the spinal cord is much
  shorter than the vertebral column.

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Peripheral Nervous System

• This system is made up of two major divisions
  the sensory and motor divisions.
• The sensory division carries information toward
  the CNS from the sense organs.
• The motor division is comprised of the voluntary
  somatic nervous system and the involuntary
  autonomic nervous system. Both carry info from
  the CNS to effector organs.

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The Sensory System Activates the Nervous System

• The senses allow the organism to monitor changes
  in the external environment.
• The senses receive the stimulus, transduce the
  stimulus to an electrical signal, sometimes
  amplify the signal and then transmit the signal
  to the CNS.

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TYPES OF SENSORS

• Mechanoreceptors
• Pacinian corpuscles
• Merkel cells
• Meissner's corpuscles
• muscle spindles
• hair cells
• auditory
• lateral line in fish
• equilibrium
• Chemoreceptors
• osmoreceptors
• multiple classes of taste receptors
• multiple classes of olfactory receptors
• Thermoreceptors
• Ruffini's organ
• end-bulbs of Krause
• Pain
• Electromagnetic receptors
• electroreceptors

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Autonomic Nervous System

• Something that is autonomic can run on its
  own, like automatic.  The ANS is made up of
  nervous tissue that controls involuntary organ
  and bodily function.  For example, it is your
  autonomic nervous system that commands smooth
  muscle to contract in blood vessels so that the
  vessels constrict. It also controls all major
  organs and their actions. The two divisions are
  the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions.

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Autonomic Nervous System
The following website has an excellent learning
module on the autonomic nervous system. Using the
website answer the appropriate questions that are
listed on your question sheet.
http//webx.washcoll.edu/wc.html/siemen/ans.html