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Outline The Processes Of Nociception

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Week 7 FPP Assignment
Kelsy Weavil
Q1. (1a) Outline the processes of nociception:
Nociception is a neural process that senses and responds to harmful stimuli, for instance in this scenario Linda rolling her ankle. Nociceptive pain comes from an actual or potential mechanical or chemical stimuli that causes injury to non-neural tissue, this is due to the activation of nociceptors. (1)
Nociceptive pain has 5 phases: Transduction, Conduction, Transmission, Modulation, and Perception.
• Transduction occurs under the skin, within joints or organs where nociceptors (sensory neurons) are activated when the sensory receptor of the peripheral somatosensory nervous system reaches a high threshold. When the body is struck by a harmful stimulus that is damaging or threatening a tissue it creates an action potential by two types of nociceptor fibre, A-delta fibres and C-fibres. (2) In this example, the harmful stimulus is Linda rolling her ankle. This has activated her sensory receptors as her maximum threshold potential was reached therefore initiating the transduction phase.
• Conduction occurs when that action potential transmits along the periphery up to the cell bodies in the dorsal root ganglion in the spinal cord. (2) The action potential from Linda’s ankle injury is travelling up the periphery via the primary afferent nociceptor.
• Transmission occurs when the action potential reaches the presynaptic terminal in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. A-delta and C fibres release

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