Understanding Action Potentials: Simulation, Refractory Periods

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Chemistry

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Jun 10, 2024

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NSC 4119-02 January 31, 2022 Action Potential Lab Questions:  1. Producing an Action Potential Simulation: A. In this simulation, what stimulus strength does it it take to produce an action potential?    At 1ms duration, the stimulus strength to produce an action potential was 20nA. B. More generally, what is the term for a depolarization large enough to generate an action potential? The term would be above the threshold value. 2. Exploring the Refractor Period: A. During the absolute refractor period, no additional action potentials are possible. B. However, during the relative refractory period, a second action potential can be generated under when: there’s a greater stimulus.   3. Encoding Stimulus Strength (1): A. How do different current intensities affect action potential firing? The different current intensities affects the frequency or quantity of the action potential firings at a time. B. What can we infer from increases in firing rate? We can infer that the size of that action potential does not become affected but influence the speed that the neuron could fire. 4. Encoding Stimulus Strength (2):  A. How do different current durations affect action potential number? As the duration number increases at a longer period of time, the number of action potentials also increase as well. B. For a long duration stimuli, how does the inter-stimulus interval change over time? Over time, when action potentials had been firing, it eventually gets slowed down C. What is the term for this change?  Spike rate adaption aka spike frequency adaptation.
5. Axon Diameter and Myelination: A. How does the axon diameter affect conduction velocity of action potential? When an axon has a larger diameter, the conduction velocity of the action potential is much quicker and the messages can be delivered faster. The reason is that there ion flow has less resistance and less probable that the incoming ions will collide causing it to be slowed down. B. How does myelination affect conduction velocity of action potential? Myelination speeds the conduction velocity of action potential because it functions as an electrical insulator. 6. Axon Diameter and Myelination (continued): A. In the "Axon Diameter" simulation, export the spreadsheet with the data you generated and use it to find the line of best fit for the non-myelinated and myelinated data (note that the non-myelinated data is not really linear, but for the purpose of this comparison the linear approximation is good enough). Based on the generated trendlines, what conduction velocity would you expect for a myelinated and unmyelinated 20 uM axon  (Hint 1: solve the equation using Excel, so you don't have to complete by hand; Hint 2: 20 is your X-value in the generated equations)?   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.5 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 f(x) = 0.4 x − 0.04 f(x) = 1.43 x − 2.1 Conduction Velocity and Axon Diameter Non-myelinated Linear (Non-myelinated) Myelinated Linear (Myelinated) Axon diameter (µm) Conduction Velocity Non-myelinated: 7.97 µm Myelinated: 26.55 µm
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