Practice question · Multiple choice
Electrical synapses exist and are faster, yet almost all human synapses are chemical, slower, and requiring a whole apparatus of vesicles, transmitters and receptors. What does that expense buy?
Hints
- An electrical synapse passes current straight through. Ask what it therefore cannot do to the signal.
- Every psychiatric drug in this unit acts somewhere in that expensive apparatus.
Show the answer
A. Computation, since a chemical synapse can be modulated
Why
A gap junction passes the signal faithfully and can do nothing else. Converting to chemistry buys a place to intervene: the same input can be amplified, inverted to inhibition, or strengthened by learning. Every drug in this unit works in that gap, the expense is what makes the synapse programmable.
Practise Synaptic Transmission
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More questions on Synaptic Transmission
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