Caudate Nucleus - Spines, Glossary of Terms - Psychophysiology

Lecture

Caudate nucleus - a neural structure that is part of the basal ganglia. The caudate nucleus receives afferent connections from all areas of the cortex, as well as from the nonspecific nuclei of the thalamus.
Chemoreception - the set of phenomena involved in the perception of a chemical stimulus and the transformation of its action into a specific electrical process.
Cholinoreceptor(s) - membrane receptors sensitive to acetylcholine.
Cholinergic neurons - neurons that release acetylcholine as their mediator.
Chorion - the outer membrane of the mammalian embryo; performs protective and trophic functions.
Chronobiology - a branch of biology that studies how life processes unfold over time.
Chronometry of processes of information processing - a set of methods for measuring the duration of individual stages in information processing, based on measurements of physiological indices, in particular the latency periods of components of evoked and event-related potentials.
Cellular - relating to cells, composed of cells.
Cenesthesia - loss of the sense of one's own "self", a manifestation of depersonalization.
Central nervous system (CNS) - the part of the nervous system of higher animals and humans, formed by an aggregation of neurons that make up the brain and spinal cord.
Centripetal - directed from the periphery toward the center.
Centrifugal - directed from the center toward the periphery.
Cerebral - relating to the brain.
Cephalization - one of the principles of nervous system development, consisting in a particularly high degree of differentiation of the nervous system at the head end, where the most important sense organs are concentrated, giving the organism the ability to orient itself in the environment and to carry out motor reactions in accordance with that orientation.
Cephalocaudal developmental trend - a course of development in which the growth of the organism proceeds in the direction from "head to lower limbs".
Circadian rhythms - fluctuations in the activity of the body's biological systems, recurring with a period approximately equal to the length of a day; in humans, circadian rhythms have their own intrinsic period of 25 hours. Circadian rhythms perform important functions: they align biological activity with the optimal time of day and ensure the coordination of life processes.
Circannual rhythms - fluctuations in the biological activity of organisms with a period close to one year.
Cytoarchitecture of the cortex - the layer-by-layer features of the structure and arrangement of cells in the cerebral cortex.
Cytoarchitectonic fields of the cortex - areas of the cortex having specific features of cell structure and of the arrangement and distribution of nerve fibers; about 50 different areas of the cortex are distinguished - cortical cytoarchitectonic fields - each of which differs from the others in subtle, sometimes hard-to-detect features of the arrangement of neurons and their fibers; each field has its own number.
Critical flicker frequency - the minimum frequency of light flashes at which a person perceives continuous illumination; used as an indicator of the lability of the nervous system.
Frequency spectrum of the EEG - the set of frequency components of the EEG. The spectrum can be conventionally divided into the range of slow electrical activity - the delta and theta bands; the alpha-activity band; and the band of high-frequency electrical activity (beta and gamma rhythms).
Sensitivity - the capacity of an organism to perceive stimuli coming from the external environment or from internal organs and tissues. The physiological basis of sensitivity is the activity of the analyzers.
Directional sensitivity - a pronounced response of receptors to the direction of the stimulus, manifested in the fact that the receptor is maximally excited at a certain direction of the stimulus, and as the direction of the stimulus changes, the excitation progressively decreases.
Sherrington's funnel - the convergence of numerous afferent inputs into a single, anatomically limited efferent channel; the number of afferent fibers (pathways) considerably exceeds the number of efferent ones, so that the input part of the system relates to the output part as the wide part of a funnel relates to its spout.
Spines - lateral protrusions of the dendrites of nerve cells in the mammalian cerebral cortex; dendritic spines are presumed to serve for forming contacts between individual nerve cells.