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Neurons and Muscle

 

 

BACKGROUND AND PREPARATION
  1. Preview text chapters, lab manual, Powerpoint presentations, web resources
  2. Print out handouts for this section of course
  3. View Body Smart Nervous System section [link]
  4. Check out "Neuroscience for Kids" website--it's the best! [link]
  5. See animations on Neurons and Synaptic Activity [link] [need Martini text website access--link]
  6. Nervous System Interactive Crossword Puzzle [link]

 
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Neurons

  1. Millionaire Game--Spinal Cord [PPT download]
  2. Class presentation:  Neurons and neural tissue [PPT download]  [Tegrity recording of PowerPoint]
  3. Animation of action potential in neuron [link]
  4. Fun neuron models--do at home! [link]
  5. View neurons and other nervous tissue in microscope. Great nervous system images [link]
  6. Virtual Leech Neurophysiology Lab (from Howard Hughes Medical Institute) [link]
  7. Touch Discrimination lab [link to website background] [Sensory Homunculus images]
  8.  Wish list for Neuron Histology and Physiology [Word download] 
  9. Millionaire Game--Nervous System [PPT download]
  10. Animations of autonomic innervation from spinal cord and brain to targets [link] [need Martini text website access--link]
  11. Millionaire Game--Autonomics [PPT download]
  12. Autonomic Jeopardy Game [PPT download][Sensory Homunculus images]

Muscle

  1. Class presentation:  Muscle tissue and how it works [PPT download]  [Tegrity recording of PowerPoint] [Tegrity addendum]
  2. Animation of muscle structure and "sliding filament theory" [link][similar animation from Martini text--link]
  3. Great muscle review--types, function, actin-myosin [link]
  4. Nice animation of muscle action potential and flow /role of calcium [link]
  5. Sequence of events from Motor Neuron action potential to contraction of muscle at cellular level. Be sure you see this animation (from the Brain Top to Bottom) [link]
  6. See histological basis for muscle function in microscope.  Identify different muscle types--skeletal, smooth, cardiac.
  7. EMG's to investigate muscle function in our own bodies.  Recordings of EMG's taken during lab [link]
  8. Wish List for Muscle Histology and Physiology (word download)
LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Neurons and their function

  1. Visualize neuron basic structure, size, shape, processes, location in spinal cord, spinal nerve
  2. Understand propagation of action potential as basic neuron function
  3. Know role of other nervous tissue cells
  4. Understand synapses or connections between neurons.  Reason why they form, how they contribute to nervous system function and how they work
  5. Know the basic elements of a "motor unit" and what it is able to accomplish in the body

Muscle and its function

  1. Construct a complete view of muscle tissue organization from the protein molecular level (actin and myosin "thin and thick fibers") to the whole muscle.
  2. Describe how muscle tissue functions including role of action potential in cell membrane, calcium released by SR, and actin-myosin protein complex with muscle cells
  3. Assemble a list of differences between skeletal, smooth and cardiac muscle.  know where each type of muscle is found and analyze how and why they might function differently.
  4. Be able to identify different types of muscle tissue in a microscope
  5. Review energy use by muscle cells/tissues and the difference between slow and fast muscle fibers
WEB RESOURCES

Action potentials--lots of details!! [link]

 

Great nervous system images [link]

 

Sequence of events from Motorn Neuron action potential to contraction of muscle at cellular level. Be sure you see this animation (from the Brain Top to Bottom) [link]

 

 

DO YOU LIKE TO THINK IN SEQUENCES?  DID YOU LEARN THE ALPHABET ALL IN A ROW...OR DO YOU LIKE SEPARATING THE VOWELS AND CONSONANTS?

 

I can imagine a compendium notebook construction for what we've done on the nervous system that just takes our basic reflex example--the finger on the hot stove and arm pulling back--and maps it out from start to finish.  Maybe it would be on a big piece of butcher-block paper, or the backside of an ancient scroll (this does, after all, embody everything we can do as humans) or a bunch of sheets taped together:  First the sensory neuron interacting with the Merkel cells on the skin, details of how the action potential is triggered to send a message down the sensory neuron,  a sense of the scale of the axon, its excitable cell membrane, the surrounding Schwann cells with their myelin forming the myelination or myelin sheath....onto the cell body of the sensory neuron, its location in the dorsal root ganglion, maybe some details of that ganglion, its relation to the spinal cord, on up through the dorsal root into the spinal cord, a cross section of the cord, its gray and white matter, its relation to the vertebral column....then something about "command central," the black box of how the message is processed, at the spinal cord level, maybe back up to the brain (details on that later), then the response...a motor neuron triggered at its cell body, the location of that cell body (back to the spinal cord), the way the action potential (repeat) travels down the motor neuron axon,, the makeup of the spinal nerve where that axon is located, the different types of neurons that would/could/should be in the spinal nerve (maybe an aside on visceral/autonomic motor neurons--sympathetics and parasympathetics--where they're located) and then the motor message arrives at the muscle, the terminal of the axon and its synapse (neuro-muscular junction) with the muscle cells that it triggers to contract--taking us right into the next topic for this part of the semester...how muscle cells work.

 

 

Biology Department                                                                                                                         In Ecuador:

Yavapai College                                                                                                                      Casilla 10-01-699

1100 East Sheldon Street                                                                                                            Ibarra-Ecuador

Prescott, AZ  86301                                                                                                            Tel:  593-62-608-789

Office:  4-233A                                                                                                                         Skype:  lmfrolich

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© Larry Frolich 2008

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