Name: 交感神經系統。速成班 A&P #14 (Sympathetic Nervous System: Crash Course A&P #14)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:32:14.000Z
Duration: 10 min 44 s
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So you’re sound asleep, when your smoke alarm goes off. Before you even know what’s

going on, you start to feel it. Those smoke alarms are loud -- for a good reason. Your

heart starts to race, your breathing picks up, you become sweaty all over your body.

You are stressed. And I’m not talking about the my-iPhone-just-died kind of stress. I’m

talking about the I’m-afraid-I-might-die kind of stress.

Even though it’s often seen as a dirty word, stress, like pain, isn’t all bad -- it’s

actually very useful if you’re, y’know, trying to get out of a burning building.

Your sympathetic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that responds to stress,

and it does its job exceedingly well by focusing on what your body needs to do right now.

Like, when you’re facing a life-or-death ordeal, you don’t need to be digesting that

cashew cluster in your intestines, or producing reproductive cells, or fighting off an infection.

That’s all stuff that you can deal with later, when you’re out of harm’s way.

So your sympathetic nervous system sweeps these suddenly trivial functions aside to

blast all of your energy to your brain and heart and muscles to deal with the threat at hand.

So, this is where I tell you that you’re lucky to have a sympathetic nervous system.

And that it keeps you alive. And that you would probably die in X Period of Time if you didn’t have one.

All of which is true. But here’s the thing: the problem is, nowadays our bodies’ stress

responses are triggered all the time, practically every day, even when we are not in mortal danger.

I mean, worrying about paying your wireless bill or being late for an important meeting

-- those things are terrible, but they will not kill you.

But, good luck explaining that to your nervous system.

Because your physiological responses to  non-immediate stresses are largely the

same as when you’re fighting for survival.

So, if stress is, like, ruining your life, that’s why. And that’s part of the reason

that should get to know how it works. Because by learning about your sympathetic

nervous system, you come to understand one of the key players in the physiology of stress.

You may recall from our tour of the anatomy of your autonomic nervous system, that in

both your sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions, almost every signal has to cross two synapses.

Each neuron travels from its root in the spinal cord to a ganglion, where it synapses -- and

yes, that is a verb as well -- with another nerve fiber. And that one, in turn, leads

to an effector organ, where it synapses again to create whatever response was signaled -- like

sending more blood to your skeletal muscles, or making your heart pump faster.

But you gotta wonder -- or at least I gotta wonder: how do these neurons and effectors

actually communicate with each other? And how do all of those signals result in the

high-octane sensations that we know as “stress”?

By and large, the stress response includes two kinds of chemicals, both of which I’m sure you've heard of.

The first, of course, are neurotransmitters. These are made and released from neurons themselves,

and like we talked about in our lesson about synapses, they are what neurons use to communicate

with each other -- or their effector organs -- across a synapse.

The other chemicals involved in stress are hormones, which are secreted by your glands.

There are at least 50 different hormones at work in your body right now, and they do everything

from regulating your sleep cycles to making your body retain water so you’re not dying

I’m telling you all of this now, up front, because hormones and neurotransmitters are

100% necessary for understanding how your sympathetic division ultimately works.

BUT! When you trace a single sympathetic signal, from the initial stimulus to the final response,

those chemicals can be kind of hard to keep track of.

That’s because the very same substance can have different effects -- actually, sometimes,

totally opposite effects -- depending on where it’s received in your body.

And to make things even more fun, even though neurotransmitters are part of your nervous

system, and hormones are products of your endocrine system, a compound can be considered

either a neurotransmitter or a hormone -- even though it hasn’t changed one iota -- depending

on where it happens to be operating in your body.

So all of this can make understanding your stress responses pretty confusing! You might

The smoke alarm wakes you up. You smell smoke. It is time to move muscles. Fast.

Your brain sends action potentials down your spinal cord and preganglionic neuronal axons.

Those signals flow all the way to their ganglia.

When the signals reach the synapses inside the ganglia, the nerve fibers then release

a neurotransmitter -- called acetylcholine, known to its friends as ACh.

If you haven’t heard of acetylcholine yet, you’re gonna wanna remember that name.

In addition to working in sympathetic ganglia like this, it’s also what the rest of your

peripheral nervous system and lots of your central nervous system uses to communicate.

So when it comes to nervous communication, ACh is really the coin of the realm. The premium currency.

So, that acetylcholine crosses the synapse and, if there’s enough of it, it can stimulate

action potentials in several neurons on the other end -- in the postganglionic fibers.

That’s all it does, but it’s important. It’s basically a signal booster.

Those postganglionic neurons then carry the action potential to the effector organs -- in

this case, let’s say your leg muscles, which are going to need an influx of blood

if they’re going to hustle you out of that house.

And at the end of that second, postganglionic neuron, the fiber releases a different neurotransmitter.

This one’s called norepinephrine. And it is always norepinephrine that’s released

from postganglionic fibers in the sympathetic nervous system.

It’s what crosses that final synapse and creates a response in the effector, like opening

up blood vessels that lead to the leg muscles.

So, the preganglionic fiber releases ACh, and the postganglionic releases norepinephrine.

Boom. Congrats. Your life is on its way to being saved.

But, your body has more than one mechanism for responding to things, especially things

There’s another alternative for getting the message out.

In addition to nerve fibers that lead to ganglia and then your effectors, there’s also a

set leaving the spinal cord that goes directly to your adrenal glands.

Like all preganglionic fibers, these release acetylcholine, too. But here, the signal doesn’t

end up in another neuron that triggers blood vessels to open or whatever. Instead, it triggers

your adrenal medulla to release a flood of epinephrine and norepinephrine -- hormones

that rush through your bloodstream toward your heart, lungs, and other organs.

Now, hold up! Did you notice what I just said?

Yeah, I said the adrenal glands release norepinephrine as a hormone.

Whereas in that first scenario I said that norepinephrine was a neurotransmitter that

sent the final signal to control blood flow to the leg muscle.

Norepinephrine is BOTH a neurotransmitter and a hormone, and which one it is depends

on how it’s being used. If it’s being released from a neuron and travelling across a synapse,

we refer to a messenger chemical -- no matter what it is -- as a neurotransmitter. If it’s

being secreted by a gland into the bloodstream for more widespread distribution, it’s a hormone.

Even if it’s the same chemical. And to an effector, hormonal norepinephrine is just

as good as neurotransmitter norepinephrine. But as scientists, we describe them differently,