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Follow dendrites, soma, axon hillock, axon, myelin, nodes of Ranvier, and terminals as one cell receives, integrates, and sends information. Use direction of flow to label neuron diagrams without needing the electrical details yet.
Compare multipolar, bipolar, and pseudounipolar shapes with motor neurons, sensory neurons, and interneurons. Reason from a cell’s branches and location to the kind of information it is likely to carry.
Apply the previous explanations in a guided problem.
Connect astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, Schwann cells, microglia, ependymal cells, and satellite glia to support, myelin, immune defense, fluid, and repair roles. Separate CNS glia from PNS glia so similar jobs do not blur together.
Assemble nervous tissue from cell bodies, dendrites, axons, myelin, connective tissue, ganglia, nerves, and CNS tracts. Predict why gray matter and white matter look different and what kind of signal traffic each mainly contains.
Check your understanding with a short quiz.
Use Golgi stains, Nissl stains, myelin stains, immunohistochemistry, fluorescent reporters, confocal microscopy, and electron microscopy as different windows on cells. Recognize how Cajal used Golgi-stained tissue to argue that neurons are separate cells.
Match questions about identity, connections, activity, and causation to evidence such as single-cell RNA sequencing, neural tracers, electrophysiology, calcium imaging, lesions, and optogenetics. Practice saying what each method can support—and what it cannot prove by itself.
Review this chapter with practice based on your mistakes.
