Free Essays >>
Free Psychology Papers >> Free Psychology Essays: Convergent Operations in Biopsychology
Converging Operations In Biopsychology
Continued from: Converging Operations In Biopsychology: Part 2
Visualizing neurons
One example of the use of converging operations comes from the attempts to visualize the neurons and the processes connected with them. Consider the pros and cons of the following neuroanatomical techniques.
The Golgi stain permits us to see silhouette shape of individual neurons by colouring only a few neurons at a time.
The Nissl stain lets us see the structures inside a neuron and also shows the position of groups of cell bodies (nuclei and ganglia).
Electron microscopy shows fine details of the structure of the neurons.
Myelin stains help us visualize myelinated areas of the CNS by selectively dyeing the sheaths of myelinated axons.
Clearly, one type of stain cannot give us a full picture of a neuron and its surroundings - each one helps us visualize neuron in its own way. For identifying the pathways connecting various structures to one another in the nervous system stains are not useful, here we need neuroanatomical tracing techniques.
They are of two types: anterograde (finding where the axons leaving a certain area go) and retrograde (finding where the axons entering a particular area come from). Neither technique would be able to give us sufficient information on its own, however, both of them combined give us a good idea of the neuroanatomical movement.
As one can see, each of the above techniques (staining and tracing) could give us only a limited view of the brain. The knowledge that we have about the brain structure could only come from the results of all the above procedures together.
Continued here: Converging Operations In Biopsychology: Part 4
|