Des Moines Memorial Drive. âIn years to come, when the young men of today are the old men of tomorrow those elms will have come into their full strength and beauty, an ever present reminder of the days when the Americans of the World War marched on French highways.â â Lt. Gov. W. J. âWeeâ Coyle, at the dedication ceremonies, 1922.
Stages of Neural Impulses. Resting potential is the name for the electrical state when a neuron is not actively being signaled. A neuron at resting potential has a membrane with established amounts of sodium (Na+) and potassium (K+) ions on either side, leaving the inside of the neuron negatively charged relative to the outside. The action potential is a rapid change in polarity that moves along the nerve fiber from neuron to neuron.
Now, inputs from certain types of stimuli may increase or decrease the membrane potential of the neuron a small amount, for a brief time, before it returns back to the resting potential. These transient membrane potential changes are called graded potentials, and they tend to occur in the dendrites of the neuron and in the soma of the neuron. And the size and the duration of the graded potentials is determined by the size and the duration of inputs-- both excitatory inputs and inhibitory inputs. Graded potentials do not pass into the axons of most types of neurons. Instead, most axons have a different membrane potential change, called an action potential.