Neupsy Key

The Control of Posture Movement begins and ends in posture: for most of the time, the motor system is not concerned with moving the body at all, but rather with…

Smell and Tast All neurons in the brain respond to chemical transmitters, so chemosensitivity is hardly a specialization of function at all. Here we shall be considering only chemical stimuli…

Motor Systems Motor systems are intrinsically rather more complex than sensory ones, which is one reason why we know rather less about them. Where do these complexities come from? Why…

Hearing To hear is to feel the touch of vibration in the air, so that its transduction mechanisms are not so very different from those of the somatosensory system. But…

Proprioception This chapter is concerned with those mechanoreceptors that provide us with information about ourselves: about the positions and movements of our limbs, the forces generated by our muscles, and…

Skin Sense In this chapter we look at the information that comes from cutaneous receptors, sensory receptors in the skin, and from the very similar ones that can be found…

Communication Within Neurons Although it had been known for nearly 2000 years that nerves served to communicate between the body and the brain, the question of how they did it…

Communication Between Neurons In the previous chapter we saw how information is conveyed electrically from one part of a neuron to another: by passive conduction when the distances are short…

The Study of the Brain Your brain is a machine whose complexity far exceeds anything constructed by human hands. It is made up of units – cells called neurons –…