Nervous system and action potentials

Everything happening in your brain/nervous

system -- emotions of love & hate, contemplating
what to eat for lunch, pulling your hand away
from a hot stove -- can be envisioned in a
coordinated turning on and off of nerve cells.
Thus, a key concept to grasp is how nerve cells
(aka neurons) turn on and off. To tackle this, we
need to know 3 main things: basic nerve cell
anatomy/connections, resting potential, and
action potential. (One could teach many full
courses on these -- we will only cover the basics).
Parts of the neuron: A typical textbook neuron
appears like this, with 3 main segments:
dendrites, a cell body, and an axon. The cell
body contains the nucleus (DNA), organelles and
coordinates normal housekeeping functions in
the cell. The dendrites can be viewed as
receivers of information, while the axon and
axon ends (terminals), can be viewed as
transmitters of information. The information is
transmitted via changes in the electrical potential
of the cell membrane.

Resting potential: A neurons electrical

potential varies between the resting (off) and
activated (on) states. One can liken this to the
digital code that computers use for information
its a 0 or a 1. Knowing the concentrations and
movement patterns of several ions is necessary
to understand resting and activated neuronal
states.
Potassium ions (K+) have a high concentration
inside the cell membrane, and the membrane is
quite permeable at rest to K+. Sodium (Na+) has
a high concentration outside the cell membrane,
but the membrane at rest is not very permeable
to Na+. Ions, like all chemical substances, will
diffuse (move) along their concentration gradient
(from high concentration to low concentration)
in an effort to equalize concentration (follow link
to diffusion example video). K+ wants to flow
from an area of high concentration inside the cell,
to an area of lower concentration outside the cell,
and it can because the membrane is permeable,
so it allows K+ to move. What happens to the
inside the of cell if positive charges are moving
out?: It is losing positive charges, so it becomes
more negative.
In addition to chemical forces of diffusion,
there are also electrical forces in play. One
analogy is playing with magnets if two opposite
(north and south) poles of a magnet are held
close together, they will attract. If two opposite
poles (N-N or S-S) are held together, they will
repel. Same with electrical charges: +ve attracts
ve , while +ve and +ve, or ve and ve repel. At
some point, the chemical diffusion force of K+

wanting to go out of the cell is balanced by a

negative electrical force pulling it back in
(remember the loss of K+ positive charges made

the inside of the cell more negative). The cell

reaches a resting equilibrium of approximately 70mV (inside negative). When the neuron is at 70mV, this represents the off state.
So how does a neuron turn on? it goes
from negative to positive. Ultimate cause =
thought, perception, emotion, movement;
Molecular cause = influx of positively charged
ions (Na+).
To look at the turning on, perhaps its good to
take an easily visualizable experience everyone
has probably burned their hand on a hot object
at some point in time. Pain and touch are very
important sensations. Your nervous system
needs to be able to pick up on these signals, so it
can take the appropriate action (like moving your
body away from the source of pain).
Your skin has sensory receptors, to pick up the
hot, painful, or other sensation. These sensory
receptors are actually coupled to an ion channel
on the neurons membrane. They are closely
related to mechanically gated channels (see
different flavors of channels below). Pain or

touch can cause the ion channel to open. When

it opens, Na+ is able to rush into the cell
(remember at rest the cell was not very
permeable to Na+). Now the cell, which was
previously at -70mV, has an influx of positively
charged ions. These will depolarize the cell,
making the cell move away from its ve resting
potential to a move positive potential.
The initial depolarization caused by the
pain/touch sensitive receptor can cause other
neighbouring channels (voltage gated) to open
up and let even more Na+ rush inside. This
makes the cell even more positive and enables a
wave of depolarization from one end of the cell
to the other end. This is called an action
potential.

But so far, weve only accounted for a signal

passing from one end of one neuron to the other
end of the same neuron (from the left side to the
right side of figure 1). The brain/nervous system
is composed of billions of cells!!!! The first cell
needs to activate a second cell, and so on, in a
relay, eventually reaching cells in the spinal cord,
brain, and muscles. So how does the signal pass

from one cell to the next???

Although it may look like the two neurons are
touching in the top picture, there is actually a
small space between them. This close apposition
is called a synapse. At the synapse, electrical
activation the first neuron will pass to the second
neuron, via chemical secretion into the tiny
space between the two neurons. When the
activation travels down the first sensing cell
towards another cell and reaches the synapse,
the activation will cause the release of a chemical
called a neurotransmitter. Much the same way
that the touch sensitive neuron had channels
which opened up and let Na+ rush in to
depolarize the cell, the neurotransmitter can
cause channels on the second cell to open, and
Na+ can rush in, thus depolarizing the second cell.
Although Na+ rushing into the post-synaptic
cells is a common theme in nervous system
communication, the brain has many different
neurotransmitters which can cause different
effects some depolarizing, some
hyperpolarizing, and the connections inside your
brain are varied and vast!!! This allows for a
tremendously complex signaling system. But
among all the complexity, one can still carry the
basic concept of transmission from one nerve
cell to another.
Additional resources:

Garland Science: Action potentials

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifD1YG07fB8); good
for discussion of action potential propagation

Biopodcast: The action potential

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EyhsOewnH4)

Biotech review: synapse

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF2UFV6EKt0)