ShmoopTube

00:00

And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by neurons, out of all

00:07

the cells in your body these have the most nerve... A long and skinny part of [A neuron]

00:12

a neuron extending from the cell body to the terminal buttons is called the what

00:16

and here are potential interesting....okay well here's a trick for remembering the [Magician on stage with a bunny in a hat]

00:22

shape of each part of the neuron their names sound a bit like what they look

00:27

like take A) the soma otherwise known as the cell body well this is a bulbous [soma diagram]

00:33

end of a neuron containing the cell body what does the soma look like a big round

00:37

body what else has a big round body a sumo..soma, sumo makes sense, definitely [A soma and sumo side by side]

00:44

not long skinny though let's take a look at C) dendrite, a dendrite is a system of

00:49

short branches that extend off the nerve cell to receive information from [A dendrite branch]

00:54

other neurons, well a dendrite looks branch like extending off the body and

00:58

curling about well what else curls? A plants tendril, dendrite..tendril..

01:05

useful to remember but not quite long straight skinny the synapse is a

01:10

tricky one its the structure that allows signals to travel between one neuron and [signals travelling between synapses]

01:14

another here's a diagram well none of that looks long and skinny so we can

01:18

definitely move on without even worrying about finding a word you can remember it by

01:21

because well nothing really works for synapse anyway or maybe something does [baby sleeping]

01:25

but we're 20 minutes past our coffee break and aren't capable of

01:28

thinking too hard about it all right the myelin sheath is pretty much what it [woman walking like a zombie for coffee]

01:32

sounds like a sheath. Thank You scientist for using a name that makes sense. Picture

01:37

a swords sheath, myelin sheath looks about the same and also happens to look long [myelin sheath with a swords sheath]

01:44

and skinny could this be our answer not quite anyway because as with the sword

01:50

and it's sheath, the myelin sheath is simply there to protect something far

01:55

more important inside which would be the axon, the axon is critical to

02:01

transferring messages from one neuron to the next as it takes the information [information transferring from neurons]

02:04

from the cell body to the terminal buttons to be carried away and also its

02:08

long and skinny so yeah it's our answer I think of the axon as the mule in a [Donkey crossing a road]

02:12

shady business transaction it's only job is to get the goods to the pickup location no

02:17

questions asked and no the axon doesn't look like a mule we kind of dropped

02:21

the whole looks like half way through this video sorry hey someone get [Woman begging for coffee]

02:24

us some coffee, stat!

Full Transcript