Electrical and chemical synapses serve different functions in the nervous system, and the use of each type of synapse has advantages and disadvantages for situations requiring signal transmission. One of the advantages of the use of an electrical synapse is speed, as electrical synapses allow action potentials to pass directly from neuron to neuron through the use of gap junctions. This direct passage and resulting speed of transmission isn’t present in chemical synapses. Chemical synapses rely on the transformation of the action potential into a chemical called the neurotransmitter, which is diffused across the synapse to bind to receptors in another neuron and then transformed into another action potential to continue the signal transmission
