Effects of Caffeine on Nerve Impulses

Abstract:

An action potential is the transmission of an electrical signal down the axon located within its neuron. For an action potential to occur, the stimulus must go above its threshold value. If not, an action potential will not occur. The action potential can also be manipulated by the addition of a pharmaceutical drug. To analyze the above information, an anesthetized earthworm’s nerve cord was used. The earthworm was pinned, dorsal side up, to the tray. An incision was made to expose the nerve cord. Then a chloride silver wire was put under the nerve cord. The chloride silver wire was clipped to Output 1 and Output 2, which was connected into the PowerLab software to collect and process the data. Once the original data is collected, a pharmaceutical drug was added to demonstrate the effects pharmaceutical drugs can have upon the nervous system. The data collected included the amplitude of the action potential, the stimulus threshold, and the latent period of the action potential, and the effect of the pharmaceutical drug upon the threshold, amplitude, and latent period. The data was analyzed for the increase upon the system and the p-value was determined. The p-value showed that the addition of caffeine did have a significant impact on the amplitude of the action potential. The caffeine caused the amplitude to increase by 39.14%.

Introduction:

Neural activity is a product of ion transportation across a neuron cell membrane. The concentrations of ions in both the extracellular and intercellular fluid create an electrochemical gradient that is referred to as membrane potential. When a cell is not active, the homeostatic concentrations create what is called the resting membrane potential. An array of gated channels control the permeability of ions to a neuron membrane and is what balance the concentrations at rest and dictate the flux of ions when the neuron is active. When a stimulus inputs a signal on a neuron dendrite, the cell is either...