The frontal lobe contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation. Dopamine tends to limit and select sensory information arriving from the thalamus to the forebrain.
Na + concentration is lowered, indicating that Na + in-flux is responsible for the rising phase of the action po-tential. Their data also suggested that the falling phaseof the action potential was caused by a later increase inK+ permeability.
A stimulus is received by the dendrites of a nerve cell. This causes the Na+ channels to open. If the opening is sufficient to drive the interior potential from -70 mV up to -55 mV, the process continues. Having reached the action threshold, more Na+ channels (sometimes called voltage-gated channels) open. The Na+ influx drives the interior of the cell membrane up to about +30 mV.