You’re in math class. You didn’t have time to finish your homework the night before and your teacher announces that you have a pop quiz on last night’s work. You feel stressed. Your brain’s immediate response to the stress is to activate three communication systems that will regulate your body’s response.
The first is the voluntary or behavioral nervous system. This will send your muscles a message so they can respond to the information your senses give them (maybe when you see the quiz, you get scared and run to the bathroom to buy time).
The second system is the autonomatic nervous system. This combines your emergency branch, called the sympathic branch, and your calming branch, called the parasympathic branch. Your sympathic branch was what induced your running away from the quiz, by signaling to your arteries which supply blood to your muscles to relax and deliver more blood and by signaling to your arteries which supply blood to your skin, kidney, and digestive tract to deliver less blood so that your muscles will be able to move more easily. The parasympathic branch keeps your body’s maintenance system in order (for example, it keeps you from throwing up from your nervousness) and calms down your emergency system, so you do not stay ready to move for an extended period of time.
The third system is the neuroendocrine system, which is in charge of keeping your body’s internal functions operating. "Stress hormones" are sent through your blood when you feel overwhelmed. Two of the most important stress hormones are epinephrine, which is often called adrenaline, and cortisol. Epinephrine is quickly released by your body and prepares you for the “fight or flight” situations that stress often puts you in. By speeding up your heartbeat, raising you blood pressure, relaxing your bronchial tubes so that you can breath rapidly, triggering the release of other stimulating hormones, and slowing down your digestive process to conserve energy for the muscles, epinephrine adjusts your body to effects of stress. Cortisol is released into the bloodstream about five minutes later to help your body return to normal.
As all this is happening in your body, all you can feel as you sit down to take the quiz is butterflies in your stomach and your heart beating faster. Although you’ll be okay, make sure that you manage your stress as stress is the cause of most illnesses! Next time, plan ahead so your brain can focus on the math, and not on handling the stress!
Each year, in addition to conducting our own research, students in 21st Century Biology participate in the nation-wide Brain Awareness Week (BAW), co-sponsored by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives and the Society for Neuroscience.
By constructing a recording device from a phonograph needle, the vibrations in substrate can be converted to an electrical signal that can be displayed on an oscilliscope and heard through a speaker. This device amplifies the insect vibration to an intensity level which can be perceived by the human ear. We are currently studying the forms of communication utilized in mating and raising young, finding food, and escaping danger.