The nervous system is the pathways that the brain uses to send information through out the body. The nervous system is needed to relay messages to the brain and back to different parts in the body. If the nervous system becomes disabled in any way, a person would lose a lot of its normal bodily functions.
The major organs of the nervous system are the spinal cord and the brain. They are the transmitters and both are needed in healthy condition to operate our nervous system efficiently.
The nervous system is composed of two parts:
The central nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord.
The peripheral nervous system consisting of all the neurons in the body, other than those in the brain and spinal cord. It is a vital component of the human body, which helps in sensing and movement. The smooth functioning of the five senses - touch, sight, taste, hearing and smell, is attributed to it.
There are some fats about the nercvous system that we didnt know about like:
- The brain weighs approximately 3lbs
- A man's spinal cord is a bundle of nerve tissue that is about 17.7 inches long, an average woman's spinal chord is 16.9 inches long
- In humans, the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, while the left side of the brain controls the right side of he body
- At a given point of time, only four percent of the cells in the brain are active, the rest are kept in reserve.
- In a child developing inside the womb, neurons grow at the rate of 250,000 neurons per minute.
- By the time of its birth, the baby's brains consists of around 10 million nerve cells.
- The weight of the brain in average adult males is 1375 grams, while in females it is 1275 grams and as we grow older the brain loses a gram each year
- At a given point of time, only four percent of the cells in the brain are active, the rest are kept in reserve.
awesome post Karla! I have to admit there were somethings I didn't know about until you posted it up here. I find it fascinating to know that the brain only weighs 3lbs, for some reason I thought it would smaller then that, so that was pretty interesting to learn. I surely didn't know that only 4% of brain cells are active and the rest our kept in reserve..so I wonder what alcohol would do to that 4% because I know that for every beer a person drinks it kills what a thousand or million brain cells? something like that I guess, so I wonder what effect that would have on the active and reserve cells. Awesome post, I learned some new things :) thank you! :D
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you enjoyed it and just like you i didnt know many of these facts. It is interesting to know how much our brain weights i dont think many people ever think about that. Last night i also read about the myth how they say that we only use 10% of our brain and obviously thats not true, otherwise our brain would weight about 402 grams i think the same as a sheep or a goat i cant remember...imagine, now that would be one small and light brain :)
DeleteIt's refreshing that a least one of us didn't write about the blood-brain barrier. Haha. Seriously though, only 4%? So what are the other 96% doing during that time? Like, when are they actually used? I also had no idea our brains lose weight. Would you happen to know why that is? Good post! I feel like maybe I've been taking the nervous system for granted.
ReplyDeletewell yeah those are some interesting facts that not many people pay attention to but they are good to know. I'm sorry but no i don't know, i just happened to stumble upon these facts and found it interesting to mention them but it would be interesting to know what happens to the other 96%. :)
DeleteI enjoyed reading the fun facts. I also didn't know that we lose a gram of our brain a year. I wonder how much of that is associated to Alzheimer's or old age. Also, thanks for clearing up the difference between the CNS and the peripheral nervous system. Nice blog post!
ReplyDeleteThanks i'm glad you enjoyed the post. Im sure there has to be some connection to it all, i mean theres many things we dont know about our body but to be honest those are questions that are intersting to look for maybe theres an answer out there. :)
DeleteIt is so amazing that if one part of our body get damaged it could ruin so many other things throughout our body. If one part of brain gets damaged it could affect our speech or interpretation. It is so scary how something like that could happen to us in an instance.
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