1. You have been to an ‘eat all you can buffet and have consumed large amounts of food. After returning home, you recline on the couch to watch television. Which division of the nervous system will be handling your body’s after-dinner activities? List several organs involved, the major nerve supply to each organ, and the effects of the nervous system on their functions.
Answer: The food that was eaten during the buffet will undergo digestion performed by the following organs: salivary glands, pancreas, liver, stomach, intestines, and gallbladder. Afterward, when the body is in a resting phase, the heart rate decreases as well as its force due to the lesser energy required by the body. All of the organs mentioned above are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, specifically the parasympathetic division. The facial (VII) nerves and the glossopharyngeal nerves (IX) nerves serve as nerve supplies for the salivary glands. For the other organs (pancreas, liver, stomach, intestines, gallbladder, and heart), the nerve supply is the vagus (X) nerves
2. Your friend is driving home from work, listening to her favorite music, when suddenly a bicycle came out of nowhere. She manages to swerve avoiding hitting the bicycle. She continued to drive home but she noticed that her heart is beating fast, she had goose bumps, and her hands were sweaty. How would you explain these effects?
Answer: The situation that my friend experienced can be called an emergency situation, where emotional stress was experienced as the bicycle suddenly appeared which activated their fight-or-flight response. An emergency situation is one of the “E situations”–along with exercise, excitement, and embarrassment– where body changes occur resulting from the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. The increase in heart rate and the occurrence of goosebumps and sweaty palms are a consequence of an increase in sympathetic activity. Even if my friend was able to successfully avoid the bicycle, the bodily changes that they experienced were prolonged and intensified due to the secretion of epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal medullae which is also involved in the fight-or-flight response.
References:
Tortora, G. J., & Derrickson, B. (2014). Principles of Anatomy and Physiology (14th ed., pp.523–545). Wiley.