The neuron is specialized cell in the nervous system that gathers and transmits information (neural impulses); it is a cell whose duty is sending and receiving information. The neuron is the smallest unit of life within the nervous system because it is at the cellular level of organization.

Parts of a neuron

Neurons generally speaking, have three (3) parts which are dendrite, cell body or soma body, and axon respectively.

Dendrite:  This is the branched part of a neuron that receives impulses and conducts them towards the cell body; it is the receptor part of a neuron which upon stimulation lead to action potential that is then move towards the cell body.

Cell body: This is the part of a neuron that contains the metabolic machinery that keeps the cell alive and functional. It is the part of a neuron that houses the nucleus and every other element needed by the cell for its metabolic activity.

Axon: This is the part of the neuron that convey the neural impulses to glands, muscles, or other neurons. It is the “output” side of the neuron and sends neural impulses to adjacent neurons. axon usually extend outward from the cell body like a wispy thread, and it divides into several branches at its end called axon terminals.

Types of neurons

Neurons usually comes in four type vis – a- vis; Afferent neuron, efferent neuron, Projection neuron, and interneuron.

Afferent neurons: Afferent neurons by nature are neurons that covey neural messages from both the internal and external environment of the body towards the central nervous system.

Efferent neurons: Efferent neurons are neurons that carries message outward from the central nervous system to the effector site such as muscles and glands. This neuron comes with long axon.

Projection neurons: Projection neurons are neurons that are neither afferent nor efferent, but instead they are neurons that link one are of the central nervous system with another. They achieve this due to their extremely long axon.

Interneurons: Interneurons are also neurons that neither afferent nor efferent in nature. Instead they help to connect neurons to each other.

Note: sometimes interneuron is used to denote both projection neuron and interneuron

Photo credits: enchantedlearning.com

Parenting the Adolescents

The various biological, physical, social, and psychological changes that the adolescents experience also put a strain on their behavior. Due to the behavioral change of adolescents, most parents do find it difficult to relate properly with their adolescents.

Adolescence is an extremely critical and vital phase of human life, it is a phase in which, if the new psychological, physical and social capacities are properly channeled and managed would result to the aversion of maladjustment issues in them and urge them to immensely add to the mechanical, social, and human improvement of their nation. In the words, self-awareness is integral to human advancement.

It therefore, became apparent that the role of parents/guardians in helping adolescents to achieve a normal and healthy development cannot be over emphasized. Thusly, parents/guardians must be capable of being just about everything to his/her kid including being an advocate, instructor, companion and so forth. For parents/guardians to be everything to their kid, there must be a decent relationship between the guardians and the adolescents. This is so in light of the fact that the time of puberty likewise includes the move from child parent/guardian relationship to youthful grown-up parent/guardian relationship.

The inability of adolescents to form out another solid association with the parents/guardians or having parents/guardians that are profoundly critical and rejecting will probably result to the adolescent embracing a negative identity. This is not only affecting the adolescence alone, but it also affects the parent. The question at this point is how is good parenting for adolescents possible?

Good parenting for the adolescents is only possible when there is a good relationship between the adolescents and the parents. In other to ensure a proper and healthy relationship between parents and adolescents, parents should endeavor to develop the following characteristics;

Listening ability

Attentiveness

Empathy

Unconditional positive regards

Listening ability: Parents/guardians ought to attempt to effectively and mindfully listen to the young people without intrusion and permit then to express their convictions and encounters at whatever point they need to. Doing this, basically permits parents/guardians to hear the emotions and read the significance behind the adolescents' words and accordingly they will have the capacity to react to it. Likewise, guardians ought to make inquiry to check their comprehension of what the adolescent is saying, and to show that they have heard what the adolescent said.

Attentiveness: parents/guardians ought to give the adolescent full attention by putting aside their own worry and concentrating on that of the youthful. In doing this, parents/guardians ought to be straightforward ("acting naturally") as young people can without much of a stretch spot any individual who is faking it.

Empathy: parents should be able to understand and enter into the feelings of the adolescents; being in someone else’s shoe. Parents should try to understand and appreciate the nature of adolescents. by doing so, they make themselves more approachable because the adolescent only want to talk to someone who understand them, who could help them get through their problem and not just somebody they perceive is distant to them.

Unconditional positive regards: parents should accept their adolescent for who they are and not base on some set of conditions i.e, I will accept you “if” you.

Photo credits: thechampatree.com

                       Wtop.com

                        Earlyadolescents.org

                        Marseille12-sophro-log.over-blog.com

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                Many researches has focus on dream and the interpretation of dream from the perspective of the belief system and the psychoanalytic perspective that stress that dream is a result of unconscious processes and neglect the important function of sensory information and perceptual processing in our conscious and unconscious experience.

                Many of us have been puzzle with the question how come we dream? Or rather why do we dream?  Or what is responsible for we dreaming. well before I go into this in details I would like to clear a notion that this article is not in any way aim at any religious belief about dream neither is this article exploring the interpretation of dream but rather this article is directed towards shedding light to a possible cause of dream that is far less explore to be responsible for dreaming.

               

Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for their groundbreaking work exploring the function of individual cells in the visual system. Hubel and Wiesel, through recordings from individual nerve cells was able to show to us that human possesses what they called features detector- neurons in the brain or retina that respond to specific attribute of the stimulus, such as movement, orientation, and so on.

Neurons in the optic nerve or the brain all have a preferred target, a certain type of stimulus that’s especially effective in causing that cell to fire. They said “we can think of the cells therefore as “detectors.” These investigators confirmed that each cells in the visual cortex  responds to stimuli in only a limited region of space – this region defines the receptive field; the pattern of retinal stimulation that most effectively causes the cell to fire.

It is the firing of this feature detectors that is responsible for us seeing and perceiving objects and complex forms. For instance when an input reaches our retina and it triggers horizontal line detector and a vertical line detector. When these two detectors fire at the same time, this event might trigger a response of a right angle detector. The combination of activities in the detectors might eventually lead to the one saying I see my psychopathology textbook.

Hence I put forward that this features detectors might therefore be responsible for dreaming as the features detectors might be firing while we are asleep which causes us the experience of dreaming. And don’t forget that Johannes Muller opined that for us to have a perceptual experience it lies in the nerve that is being stimulated. Stimulation of optic nerve (whether from light or some other source) causes the sense of seeing; this is why strong pressure on the eyeballs lead us to see rings or stars. Similarly, stimulation of the auditory nerves – whether from a sound or something else causes the sense of hearing. This is why people sometimes experience “ringing in their ears” in the absence of any environmental sound – some illness or injury is causes stimulation of the auditory nerve.

Therefore the firing of the features detectors causes us to experience all kind of sensation that in turn forms our dream. This sensation includes virtually all the sensation that we are aware of in our conscious experience.
The question now is that where do this so called features detectors get their stimulation from since the  individual is in a state of sleep? The answer to this question lies in the fact that the biological nature of man can not do without stimulation if the individual must function properly, as such, when the brain is subjected to a resting potential due to sleep, after sometime the brain will no longer be able to tolerate the state of being deprived of stimulation. This state of stimuli deprivation will trigger the Recticular Activating System(RAS) of the brain to start creating neural impulses for the brain. The RAS is able to do this because of its connectivity to the part of the brain responsible for memory and all the sensory system except smell. This stimulation generated by the RAS lead to cortical arousal that is called dream, which occur during sleep. 

Dreams mostly occur in the stage 4 of sleep that is characterized with rapid eye movement (REM), at this stage of sleep the brain is active but the body is immobile. The cortex is energized but the skeletal muscles are completely in active. The EEG (Electroencephalogram) shows a high frequency wave that is associated with wakefulness. There is increase in the heart rate and respiration rate that is similar to that of a person awake and exercising (Jouvet, 1967).

During the REM sleep the brain been active suggest that there might be an activity in the features detectors  and other brain areas concern with sensory processing  while the skeletal motor system seem to be inactive, this also suggest why people in a horrible dreams seems not to be able to run away from impending danger in their dream .

In conclusion this article therefore does not in any form attempt to dispute other explanation that has been giving to the cause of dreaming but rather this article tries to look into the physiological event that may be responsible for dreaming and also advocate for research into the activity of the features detectors in the brain during the various stages of sleep.

Author: Awujoola Olaoluwa Emmanuel.

photo credit: wikipedia

REFRENCE:

Henry Gleitman, James Gross, Daniel Reisberg (2011). Psychology Eight Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 

Jouvet, M. Mechanisms of the states of sleep: a neuropharmacological approach. Res. Publ. Ass. nerv. ment. Dis. 1967;45:86–126.

        Friendly fire is a situation in which an individual soldier or troop mistakenly attack friendly force in an attempt to attack the enemy

 In the light of signal detection theory, for a friendly fire to occur, the individual must make a judgment whether the sensory experience he/she is exposed to is due to background noise alone or to the background noise plus a signal in order to determine whether  the faint target(friendly forces) is an enemy or not. For the individual/troops to make this judgment, it is the function of two things which are;

1.       Their perceptual sensitivity

2.       Their decision criteria

Perceptual sensitivity: perceptual sensitivity is an organism’s ability to detect a signal, this encompasses how well or fine their sight and hearing are in order for them to differentiate an enemy troop from their own troop.

Decision criteria: as much as their perceptual sensitivity will be affected by distance and other factors, they need decision criteria- an organism’s rule for how much evidence it needs before responding. Therefore a soldier might engage a rule of decision that, when in doubt and not sure/certain of sensory information reaching you, ‘shoot to kill’ in other to be on the safer sides, as it might be an enemy troop and if you fail to shoot you will definitely get shot.

                More so, such a type of decision criteria discussed above is associated with a high payoff matrix; the pattern of benefits and cost associated with certain types of responses, in this case survival.

 Neurones are cells within the nervous system that possess the ability to receive and send information. A neuron consist of three parts viz - a - viz; the dendrite, which is responsible for receiving signals/imput from a nearby neurons, it is highly branched and looks like a tangled bush.

The second component of a neuron is the CELL BODY, the cell body housed the nucleus of the neuron, and every element that the neuron needs for its metabolic activities and finally the third component of a neuron is the AXON; this is the part of the neuron that relay the information(signal/input) coming to the neuron to the other neuron through synaptic transmission(neurotransmitters).

There are three types of neurons, these are;
sensory neurons/afferent neurons; this type of neuron are the one responsible for carrying sensory inputs/signal inwardly toward the central nervous system.

motor/efferent neuron: on the other hand, this type of neuron carry information from the central nervous system to their effector muscle. most often, this neurons have long axon and are myelinated for fast and effective communication.

inter neurons; this neuron is responsible for transmiting information from one neuron to another, they are neither afferent nor efferent.

The differences between action potential and synaptic transmission is thus  describe under the following headings;

1.       Location/place of action

2.       Means/method of transmission

3.       Rate of conduction

4.       Integration of information

5.       Principle of action.

LOCATION/PLACE OF ACTION

Action potential, a brief change in the electrical charge of a neuronal membrane; the physical basis of the signal that travels the length of the neuron i.e the signal is sent from one end of the neuron to the other. The signal sent from one end of the neuron to the other is the neuron’s main response to input as well as the fundamental information carrier of the nervous system. In other words, action potential is the onset of communication among neurons in the nervous system.

Synaptic transmission otherwise known as communication between neurons i.e involving more than one neurons, occurs at the synapse; the small gap between two adjacent neurons, consisting of the pre-synaptic and post-synaptic neurons’ membranes and space between them. Synaptic transmission depends on neural succession and not just on a single neuron.