IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR TERM TEST 1
Lecture 1
● Is it true that depolarization is not limited to sodium influx, and therefore a
depolarization can be mediated by an influx of any cation or efflux of any anion?
● Are electrical signals in neurons restricted to action potentials and graded potentials?
Going off that, we learned that receptor cells in the retina translate a light signal to an
electrical signal. Is this electrical signal in the receptor cell a graded potential?
Lecture 3
● What distinguishes a battery (ion gradient), which stores energy/voltage, from a
capacitor (cell membrane), which is where membrane voltage takes place? I'm a little
confused about how voltage is used in both definitions.
Lecture 5
● The sodium-potassium pump is a protein that is encoded by 4 α genes and 4 β genes,
however only α1-α3 and β1-β2 are expressed in nervous system tissues. To clarify,
this means that the other genes are expressed to form the sodium-potassium pump in
other tissues? Does this mean that the pump varies in structure across different
tissues?
● Can it be said that a particular ion's concentration gradient can only affect resting
membrane potential if there are leak channels, as well as a driving force for ion
movement?
Lecture 6
● During a stroke, how does a nonfunctioning sodium-potassium pump lead to
membrane depolarization?
● On slide 21, for NCKX, why is the potassium pull subtracted from the sodium pull
and not added, since they are working together against the calcium pull?
● What distinguishes an immature neuron from a mature one?
● What distinguishes an exchanger fro