Practice question · Multiple choice
A near-miss on the motorway makes your heart pound within a second, and you still feel shaky twenty minutes later. Two systems are running. What separates them?
Hints
- Ask which response could possibly be fast enough to help you brake.
- Something is still in the bloodstream twenty minutes later. What put it there?
Show the answer
C. Speed and route: a second and done, or minutes and lingering
Why
Two axes on two timescales: the sympathetic-adrenal route is wired and near-instant, the HPA route is hormonal and slow to start and stop. The shakiness afterwards is the second one still clearing, and it is why a two-second event can occupy your physiology for half an hour.
Practise The Endocrine System
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
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