Nerve Cells in Action

Today's post is a YouTube medical animation which appears on news-medical.net (see link below). It depicts nerve cells in action but to my mind doesn't really tell you anything unless you're an expert. It's an attractive series of images to back up yesterday's post about the nervous system in general.

The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral.

The central nervous system contains the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system consists of sensory neurons, clusters of neurons called ganglia, and nerves connecting them to each other and to the central nervous system. These regions are all interconnected by means of complex neural pathways. The enteric nervous system, a subsystem of the peripheral nervous system, has the capacity, even when severed from the rest of the nervous system through its primary connection by the vagus nerve, to function independently in controlling the gastrointestinal system.

http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-the-Nervous-System.aspx