Functions
The section "Areas of Electrical Coupling" reflects the circumstances of earliest discovery of gap junctions and their function in allowing the transmission electrical impulses among cells at levels that elicit responses from their neighboring cells. The transmission of a nerve impulse and the contraction of muscle are relatively easily detected and quantified experimentally. "Areas of Electrical Coupling" also touches upon the retinal gap junctions which could be seen as specialist nerve cells. Many new functions for gap junctions have been uncovered since those early years.
Read more about this topic: Gap Junction
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)