Nolte's Essentials of the Human Brain

The Visual System

The visual system is the most studied sensory system, partly because we are such a visually oriented species and partly because of its relative simplicity. In addition, the visual pathway is highly organized in a topographical sense, so even though…

Brainstem Summary

The previous four chapters presented various aspects of the brainstem and its cranial nerves bit by bit. This chapter summarizes the major points, using as a vehicle the same series of drawings of brainstem sections used in Chapter 11 but…

Hearing and Balance: The Eighth Cranial Nerve

The eighth nerve is the nerve of hearing and equilibrium. All of its receptive functions are accomplished by variations on a common theme; the different sensory information carried by different fibers in the nerve is simply the result of slight…

The Chemical Senses of Taste and Smell

The Perception of Flavor Involves Gustatory, Olfactory, Trigeminal, and Other Inputs When we eat food or drink a beverage, we have a unified perception, centered on the tongue, of some mixture of flavors. However, this unified perception actually results from…

Cranial Nerves and Their Nuclei

Cranial nerves and their central connections often look bewilderingly complicated, but for the most part they are actually arranged systematically. Cranial Nerve Nuclei Have a Generally Predictable Arrangement Key Concept The sulcus limitans intervenes between motor and sensory nuclei of…

Organization of the Brainstem

The Brainstem Has Conduit, Cranial Nerve, and Integrative Functions The brainstem is another part of the CNS whose importance is out of proportion to its size. All of the long tracts traverse the brainstem on their way to or from…

Spinal Cord

The spinal cord is pretty small, but its importance is out of proportion to its size. It's the home of all the motor neurons that work your body, and of a large percentage of the autonomic motor neurons as well.…

Sensory Receptors and the Peripheral Nervous System

Neural traffic to and from the CNS travels in peripheral nerves . The afferent fibers in these peripheral nerves either have endings that respond to physical stimuli (making them primary afferents that are also sensory receptors ) or carry information…

Synaptic Transmission Between Neurons

In contrast to the way in which information travels within individual neurons as electrical signals, information is usually transmitted between neurons through the release of neurotransmitters at specialized junctions called synapses . And in contrast to unvarying, always-depolarizing action potentials,…