temporal and spatial summation

• temporal summation

  
• spatial summation

  
• spatial summation 


  • involves action potentials arriving from several different pre-synaptic membranes.
  • allows stimuli from several sources to be coordinated into a single response.
  • allows us to coordinate several stimuli to produce one response e.g to run from a dangerous situation
• temporal summation 


  • involves several action potentials arriving from the same pre-synaptic membrane in quick succession (high frequency of action potentials). allows us to filter out unhelpful or unimportant stimuli