The body uses several mechanisms to regulate temperature in response to warming or cooling. When the arm is warmed in water:
(1) The warmer blood from the arm enters general circulation and the body detects the rise in temperature, likely via the brain or carotid artery.
(2) The brain then sends nerve impulses to sweat glands and blood vessels, causing sweating and vasodilation, to cool the body by evaporation and increased blood flow to the skin.
(3) These responses are controlled by pathways involving nerve signals between body parts via the brain, allowing a localized temperature change to trigger whole-body responses.
The body uses several mechanisms to regulate temperature in response to warming or cooling. When the arm is warmed in water:
(1) The warmer blood from the arm enters general circulation and the body detects the rise in temperature, likely via the brain or carotid artery.
(2) The brain then sends nerve impulses to sweat glands and blood vessels, causing sweating and vasodilation, to cool the body by evaporation and increased blood flow to the skin.
(3) These responses are controlled by pathways involving nerve signals between body parts via the brain, allowing a localized temperature change to trigger whole-body responses.
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The body uses several mechanisms to regulate temperature in response to warming or cooling. When the arm is warmed in water:
(1) The warmer blood from the arm enters general circulation and the body detects the rise in temperature, likely via the brain or carotid artery.
(2) The brain then sends nerve impulses to sweat glands and blood vessels, causing sweating and vasodilation, to cool the body by evaporation and increased blood flow to the skin.
(3) These responses are controlled by pathways involving nerve signals between body parts via the brain, allowing a localized temperature change to trigger whole-body responses.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
The skin and temperature control - selected answers
2 (a) The warmer blood from the arm entered the rest of the circulation. (b) Even after removal from the warm water the tissues of the arm will retain some of the extra heat for a minute or two. (c) The body's response to the raised temperature might have been vaso-dilation and sweating. The sweat may continue to evaporate even after the body temperature returns to normal. 3 (a) (i) It could be the carotid artery itself or, more likely, the brain which detects the rise in temperature. (ii) It is probably nerve impulses from the brain to the sweat glands which start the sweating response. (b) It is unlikely that warm blood from the right hand would directly affect the left hand since only a fraction of this blood would pass from one hand to the other by the shortest route. The response could be brought about (1) via nerve impulses from one hand to the other (via the brain) or (2) by the brain sending impulses to the right hand when it detected the warmer blood from the left hand. (c) This result favours explanation (2). (d) This explanation favours explanation (1) and implies that the responses to hot and cold are controlled by different pathways. 8 (a) This may be true but could not be easily tested by experiment. (b) This is the best hypothesis. (c) This merely states the observation in a different way. It does not offer an explanation. (d) This might be true but it is not as simple an explanation as in (b). It is also difficult to see how it could come about.