Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• Recognition of Light
• There are two forms of retinal: cis – (bent) and trans – (stretched)
forms.
• In the dark, the retinal takes the cis – form and the rhodopsin is
inactivated.
• This keeps open the gated Na+ channels of the outer segment of
the cell and keeps the cell depolarized.
• The cell continues to send spiked signals.
• When the cell is illuminated, the retinal becomes isomerized to the
trans-retinal and activated rhodopsin.
• activated rhodopsin closes the Na+ channels and the cell becomes
hyperpolarized to stop sending the spiked signals.
• These biochemical processes create an optical image on the retinal
surface and the image will be transmitted through the optic nerves
to the cerebral cortex.
• Shortly after the photo excitation, the trans-retinal will dissociate
from the rhodopsin (bleaching). The opsin will be recycled and
the trans-retinal will be put back to cis-retinal using the other
enzymes and ATP.
• Dark adaptation
• Fading image in the retina.
• Visual Pathway – recall the anatomy of retina
• There is a significant complexity of neuronal pathways
at the level of the retina.
• Eventually, the ganglionic cells extend their axons
together as optic nerves, cross over 50% of them at the
optic chiasm, and reach lateral geniculate nuclei at the
thalamus before finally arriving at large area of visual
cortex. (Fig. 15.22)
• Visual information is spread over the wide areas of the
cerebral cortex via lateral geniculate laterals from the
optic tracts.
• Visual inputs to the pineal gland establish a daily pattern
of activity, thus circadian rhythm.
• Equilibrium and hearing (review)
• Anatomy of the Ear – in the lab
• Auditory Function
• Sound is generated by vibrating matter such as drums,
tables etc…
• It travels through matter such as air, water,wood, metals
etc…, but does not travel through a vacuum.
• It has pitch and volume.
• Humans can hear within a certain range of pitch (20 –
20,000 cps) of louder than 0db, but less than 125 db with
pain.
• While other animals have different hearing ranges.
Example: a dog whistle can be heard by dogs, but not by
humans.
• Sound traveled through the air is:
• Collected by external ear and reaches tympanic
membrane (15.23)
• The vibration of tympanic membrane is transmitted to
auditory ossicles (three tiny bones) in the middle ear
consisting of malleus, incus and staples, while tensor
tympani and stapedius muscles provide “sound
attenuation reflex” to protect the structure. (15.30)
• The vibrating foot of staples transmits the sound to oval
window. When overall window is pushed, the perilymph
will be pushed through the scala vestibuli and scala
tympani, while basilar membrane is pushed down. These
events will end up pushing out the round window.
• The vibration frequency of the perilymph will be enhanced at a
specific resonating region along the basilar membrane: the higher
frequencies are closer to the oval window and the lower
frequencies are at the further end of the cochlea.
• The position oriented movement of basilar membrane moves hair
cells causing them to rub against the tectorial membrane. (15.26)
• Hair cells attached to the basilar membrane are exposed to
endolymph. There is about a 80 mV difference between
endolymph and perilymph across the vestitublar membrane
( endocochlear potential). The difference in potential may be the
cause of the forming action potential on the hair cells.
• A large number of cochlear nerves are attached to the entire length
of the cochlea hair cells to detect sounds of different frequencies.
• Neuronal Pathways for Hearing are shown in Fig. 15.32. Both
hearing and balance senses are transmitted by the vestibulochlear
(VIII) nerve to cochlear nucleus and eventually reach the auditory
cortex
• Balance
• The organs of balance consist of two major parts: