Wearing on Her Nerves

Part 1

1. What components of the nervous system are involved in physical sensation? How does sensory impulse move throughout the body?

a. The peripheral nervous system divided into the sensory and motor divisions and the central nervous system

b. The sensory impulses travel through first by being stimulated by a receptor in the skin, which goes to the sensory neurons and travel through afferent fibers, then through the spinal cord and finally to the brain.

2. What components of the nervous system are involved in skeletal muscle movement? How does motor impulse move throughout the body? What is a “motor unit”?

c. Somatic nervous system

d. The axon carries impulses away from the cell body. Nerve impulses begin in a dendrite move toward the cell body and then move down the axon. When the impulse reaches the axon tip at the end of the neuron, the impulse transfers along the next neuron over the synapse. A motor neuron sends an impulse to a muscle or gland, and the muscle or gland reacts in response.

e. A motor unit is a motor neuron and all the muscle fibers connected to it.

3. What movements are involved in the action of standing up? What muscle need to contract to perform these actions?

f. Muscles contracting

g. Glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, calves, core, and the tibialis anterior

4. What are the different levels or organization of a muscle down to myofilaments? What is a “sarcomere” and how are its proteins organized?

h. The levels are muscle, fascicle, muscle fiber, myofibril, and myofilament.

i. The smallest contractile unit of muscle; the proteins slide past each other when the muscles relax and contract.

5. Starting from the release of acetylcholine by the motor neuron, what are the steps in muscle contraction? How is contraction ended?

j. It binds to the receptors on the motor end plate, which causes the electric potential that causes the plate to change and...