Question

Biological Psychology Use your textbook to prepare for the upcoming lecture Imagine that you are guest-lecturing on brain development in a high school biology class and are concerned that the concept of action potentials might be confusing to students Develop an analogy/metaphor that you could use to describe neuronal communication and action potentials to help students understand Include in your answer the terms resting potential, threshold, action potential, and absolute refractory period. (Your response should be approximately 100-150 words in length)

Answer 1

Most of the cells possess a resting membrane potential that enables them to perform specific functions and so do the nervous tissues as well.In neurons, this resting potential is mainatained at 70mV and the cell membrane in this state is referred to as polarised.In this resting potential state, the voltage gated K+ and Na+ channels remain closed.When a stimulus reaches a cell membrane,it results in opening of sodium voltage gated channels and influx of sodium ions into the cell takes place and this causes a reversal of the resting potential and is referred to a depolarization during which charge inside the cell becomes +ve while outside becomes negative.When the threshold potential of -55mV is reached,an action potential is triggered.At this point of time, when an action potential is being generated, the cell might not be able to generate another action potential no matter how strong a stimulus is given to the neuron and this period of time is known as absolute refractory period.