Monday, April 30, 2007

Grrrr...

I made a noodle bowl for lunch today. EVEN THOUGH I was very aware that I needed to dump the water out very carefully, forces were working against me. The steam burned my hand, my hand jerked away from the bowl, the lid fell off and my noodles ended up in the kitchen sink. Sigh.

But, I decided to use this as an object lesson to help me study for my test on the nervous system tomorrow. Let's see...so me jerking my hand away from the sensation of pain shows my Class A Fibers in action. Class A Fibers, not to be confused with Class B or C Fibers, have the largest diameter of neuron fibers and are fully myelinated. Being fully myelinated helps increase the speed with which these fibers can detect and then relay stimuli to the brain. You can find Class A Fibers in both sensory and motor nerves. And, if I have it right, the sensory A fibers were the ones that said to my brain, via my spinal cord, "Ouch! That's hot. We should do something about that." Then, my motor A fibers told my skeletal muscles, "Hey dummy! That's hot. Move your hand." Or something like that.

Just in case you wanted to know.

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