July 19, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
G Protein-Coupled Receptors in Brain and Autonomic Nervous System
(e) Macroscopic behavior and mood
regulation: We saw above how the G Protein-Coupled Receptors are responsible
for the change in behavior at the cellular level particularly with respect to
the immune system.
Even more fascinating is their powerful
affect on mammalian brain through neurotransmitters.
Almost all the mood-altering and
behavior-governing neurotransmitters of the central nervous system such as
serotonin, dopamine, histamine, GABA and glutamate exert their famed effects
through these receptors that we have been talking about.
(f) Autonomic Nervous System Regulation –
our subject of interest, that is, the vascular smooth muscle cells falls under
the control of autonomic nervous system.
Autonomic nervous system is a type of
peripheral nervous system (in contrast to the central nervous system that
includes the brain and spinal cord) that innervates smooth muscles (such as
vascular smooth muscles), glands and internal organs.
Thus autonomic nervous system is very aptly
named as it is virtually autonomous in nearly every sense and largely beyond
the control of our consciousness or will.
Your pupil will constrict when light is
shone on it no matter how much you would not wish that to happen and when you
exert yourself or get panicky your heart will begin to beat faster and respiratory
rate will rise irrespective of your desire to calm down.
Evolutionarily they are far more
significant than any other component of nervous system since the autonomic nervous
system is the prime mechanism for that famous fight-or-flight response that was
first described by the American physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon.
Walter Cannon was a medical doctor by
training who had joined the Harvard Medical School in 1896 and received his medical
degree after six long years in 1900.
He was more interested in research than
practice of medicine and very early in medical school he joined the lab of Henry
Pickering Bowditch who then was not only a physician and physiologist but also
held the post of dean of the Harvard Medical School.
Bowditch had joined Harvard Medical School
when the Divided States of America was embroiled in that infamous American
Civil War that we had read about for so many nights.
The American Civil War left almost no
American unaffected and Bowditch was directly impacted in having to
compulsorily join the Union Army where he rose to the rank of major in the
Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment.
Thus besides all his other accomplishments
in academia he was also an American soldier who quite fascinatingly soon after
the end of the war purchased materials from Germany and started experimenting
in modest attic rooms at Harvard.
There were no fancy grants then and money had
to be procured and managed wisely and frugally.
Those days United States was at its scientific
infancy and Europe was the place where true science was performed and where all
the doyens of science and mathematics to be found.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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