1. Explain the role of the nervous system in animals.

2. What is meant by the terms sensory input, integration, and motor output with respect to the nervous system?

3. What is the functional unit of the nervous system? List three structures that are present in most neurons.

4. What is the common roles of supporting cells of the nervous system (e.g. Schwann cells, oligodendrocytes...) and how do they function in the blood brain barrier?

5. What are the functional differences between sensory neurons, interneurons, and motor neurons?

6. What is a reflex? Draw a simple reflex arc.

7. Ganglia and nuclei both contain cell bodies. Why do they have different names?

8. What are the major intracellular and extracellular cations?

9. Describe how an impulse is generated in a neuron.  Use the following terms in your description

• Membrane potential
• Resting membrane potential
• Action potential
• Depolarization
• Repolarization
• Hyperpolarization
• What is the difference between a graded potential and an action potential?
• What types of ion channels are present in neurons. What factors control their functions?

• What is refractory period and how is it involved in maintaining one-way impulse propagation?
• What is saltatory conduction, and how does it increase the speed of impulse conduction?

12. List the differences between electrical and chemical synapses.

13. Why are neurotransmitters important?

14. Draw a chemical synapse

15. What is released from a pre-synaptic neuron at the axon terminal?

16. What structures are present on the post-synaptic membrane that permit communication to occur?

17. Explain the phrase “ integration occurs at the cellular level”

• What are excitatory (EPSP) and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials (IPSP)? How do they differ from action potentials?
• Why doesn't a single EPSP produce an action potential in the post-synaptic neuron?
• How does summation control the frequency of action potentials produced in the post-synaptic membrane?

19. In vertebrates, the nervous system is organized into the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system.  What are the sub-divisions of each system?

20. What is (are) the difference(s) between

• White and gray matter?
• Sensory and motor neurons?
• Somatic and autonomic nervous sytems?
• Parasympathetic and sympathetic divisions?