Coordination and

response
Wafa Elias
• Sensitivity: ability to detect and respond to changes in the environment.
• • Stimuli - a change in the environment detected by receptors
• • The surroundings outside the body are called the external environment. The inside of the body is known as the
internal environment. The body also responds to changes in its internal environment, such as temperature and blood
glucose levels.
• • Receptors – cells that are sensitive to stimuli. (The role of any receptor is to detect a stimulus by changing the energy
of the stimulus into electrical energy in nerve impulses. For example, the eye converts light energy into nerve impulses,
and the ear converts sound energy into nerve impulses)
• • Sense organ: group of receptors cells that are sensitive to specific stimuli e.g light, sound, touch, temperature and
chemicals
• • Effectors – cells that carry out response to certain stimuli (muscle/ glands).
• • Response – reaction of an organism to a specific stimuli.
• • Most animals have two methods of sending information from receptors to effectors. o The fastest is by nerves that
transmit information in the form of electrical impulses, the receptors and the effectors make up the nervous system.
• o The slower one is by hormones that travel in the blood, and it’s a part of endocrine system.

• • Co-ordination is the way all the organs and systems of the body are made to work efficiently together.
• Stimulus → receptor → coordination → effector → response
• Synapses
• The CNS is made of many billions of nerve cells that have links with many
others, through synapses. So Neurons do not connect directly with each
other: there is a gap called a synapse cleft.
• Synapse: a junction between two neurons, consisting of a gap across which
impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter
• Synaptic cleft: small gap between each pair of neurons
• More rod cells than cone cells in the retina
• − No rods and no cones in the blind spot where optic nerve leaves retina.
• − Only cones at the fovea – no rods
• − Rods unevenly distributed on either sides of fovea.