Exam 29: Regeneration and Repair of Synaptic Connections After Injury

The binding affinity of ACh for its fetal receptors at the site of innervation vs. that at the end-plate in adult muscle is likely because of the

What is the best kind of cells to transplant into the adult mammalian CNS?

In a spinal cord injury, if the concentration and variety of neuroprotective and neurotrophic factors outweighs those of neural inhibitory factors full recovery

If muscle is kept immobile, such as that which occurs with a broken limb confined inside a cast, explain why axons may not increase sprouting.

Synapse elimination means that the presynaptic axon will first

Explain why in a complete spinal cord injury, there is virtually no hope that the patient will ever functionally recover, whereas in an incomplete spinal cord injury, there is a possibility of some functional recovery.

Briefly describe an experiment to determine whether Ca²⁺ influx is critical for muscle contraction.

In a human complete spinal cord injury, _______ would be an appropriate type of cell to graft at the site of the lesion.

The basic aim of transplanting neural stem cells into the adult mammalian CNS is to

A patient who has just been through a terrible car accident presents in the emergency room unable to feel or move his legs. The ER surgeon suspects spinal cord damage at the lower lumbar level. To minimize the probability that this patient will be paralyzed for life, the physician should

In the acetylcholine receptor clustering process, which of the following lasts the longest?

If one were to transplant olfactory neurons and their ensheathing glial cells at the lesion site in a spinal cord injury, full recovery would likely still not occur because

Propose an explanation for how the basal lamina in the neuromuscular junction promotes synapse regeneration.

To help regenerate axons, Schwann cells express copious amounts of BDNF and NGF receptors so that the

If you applied tiny amounts of ACh to muscle, you get excitatory postsynaptic potentials (epsps) on individual muscle fibers. When a muscle is stimulated, however, action potentials are also fired and obscure the epsps. What manipulation can be done to mask the action potentials, thereby revealing the underlying epsps?

If a muscle fiber has numerous nerve inputs, what will happen if 10% of those nerve inputs were severed?

One of the major impediments of successful full recovery of function following implantation of neural stem cells is that

What are the pros and cons of severing an axon close to, as opposed to far from, its soma?

Assuming a permissive environment, which intrinsic signaling pathway would most likely not promote successful axon elongation?

Calcium influx into the muscle is directly caused by