Week 1. Introduction

During this first week of lecture we began a reveal the deep secrets, at least, those that are known, of the Nervous System. The brain is probably the most complex organ in the human body, in order to understand how we (humans) function, how we create, how we have built such a complicated and technologized society, it is necessary to address this complexity and try to understand the mechanisms that allow our existence, and the consciousness that we have of it.

Neurons and Glia

It is necessary to begin the learning process with the anatomical and physiological description of the organ: lobes, different types of tissues, gray matter, white matter; the tasks it performs such as interpreting sensory information, storing information, processing information, or controlling the body.

And of course, it is necessary to describe the main actors, the nerve cells that are mostly neurons and glial cells. Neurons are by far the leading characters since, apparently, the main task of interpreting, processing and storing information falls on them. However, glial cells are essential to maintain proper neuronal function.

The Neuronal Membrane at Rest

The understanding of how the electrochemical equilibrium is maintained in the neuronal membrane at rest is essential to understand the mechanisms that allow the generation of the action potential. Until now, I believed I understood the basics of ion channels and sodium and potassium pumps. However, by having a deeper reflection on the role they play in the ionic equilibrium maintenance, they become much more important and then I understand how fundamental is their existence. This reflection also reveals to me the enormous fragility of our biological systems; a small error in the RNA coding, a misfolded or wrong structured protein and the complete system can stop working or function erratically (of course the error must be persistent). A former professor of anatomy asked us to imagine the most unlikely situation that we could think of, some error in the functioning of the human body that would lead to some erratic behavior, surely that disease or condition would be real and would have a name. Thinking about the many diseases derived from errors in the functioning of ionic channels makes me wonder how far we are from properly characterize and treat those diseases, since we would very accurately know the composition and operation of each type of channel at the molecular level, a definitely challenging task.

Posted by Gloria Mendoza Franco

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