Complications Of The Nervous System

My phone is sitting next to me on my desk when I hear it begin to ring. I pick it up in my hand and look at the screen to see who is calling me. When I recognize my mother’s caller ID, I tap a button to accept the call. I bring the phone to my ear and hear my mother’s voice through the speaker. We talk for a few minutes, and then eventually we say goodbye. I end the call and place the phone back onto my desk. The body system that enables me to successfully complete this phone call is the nervous system (Gade, 2015a). The nervous system is the association among the billions of neurons in the brain, in the spinal cord, and throughout the body. A neuron is a cell that is specialized to receive and transmit information. The brain and spinal cord …show more content…
One of these lobes is the occipital lobe, which is primarily responsible for processing vision. When the signal from my eyes reaches my brain, the occipital lobe translates that signal from a pattern of electrical impulses into the recognizable image of a phone on a desk. The temporal lobe of the brain allows me to process language and to communicate with my mother on the phone (Gade, 2015b). Information gathered by receptors in my ears, such as the sound of the phone ringing, travels to the temporal lobe to be heard and understood. Then, the temporal lobe allows me to compose verbal responses to my mother and speak them aloud. In addition, the brain’s frontal lobe has control of executive function, allowing me to make and act on decisions (Gade, 2015b). Through processes carried out in the tissue of the frontal lobe, I decide to look at the phone and determine who the caller is, to answer the phone, and how to carry out the conversation with my mother. The frontal lobe also controls voluntary motion, directing my muscular system to physically pick up my phone and hold it to my …show more content…
When the electrical signal traveling down the axon of one nerve reaches the end of the axon, or the axon terminal, the signal must travel to the dendrites of the next neuron to continue on its path. To reach the dendrite, the signal must first cross a gap, called the synapse, between the axon terminal of the sending neuron and the dendrite of the receiving neuron. The neuron sending the message, called the presynaptic neuron, releases chemicals called neurotransmitters into the synapse. These neurotransmitters bind to receptors on the neuron receiving the message, or the postsynaptic neuron. If enough neurotransmitters bind to the postsynaptic neuron, the signal continues to the axon and the next neuron in the