Central Nervous System ( ESSAY )

I hope you remember that our nervous system is divided into two main networks that work together to help you talk, think, and even move around : the central nervous system, which we'll be talking today, and the peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system consists of two main parts, the brain and the spinal cord. The central nervous system's main task is to :

• integrate sensory information that the peripheral nervous system collects from all over our body
• coordinating both conscious and unconscious activity

All of your sensations, thoughts, and directions are processed through this two-part system.

Our brain's job is to :

• sorts out all sensory information
• give orders
• carries out our most complex functions like thinking, feeling, and remembering.

Meanwhile, the job of our spinal cord is to :

• conducts two-way signals between your brain and the rest of your body
• governing basic muscle reflexes and patterns

So, the spinal cord has some authority over something, other than just carry out signals from the brain to the rest of the body and from the rest of your body to the brain as I previously expected. Both our brain and spinal cord are made of fragile, jelly-like nervous tissue that is extremely susceptible to injuries. So all that "goo" is well-protected by the bones of your vertebrae and cranium, as well as membrane layers, or meninges, before being bathed in a cushy waterbed of clear cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid actually allows our brain to somewhat float in our skull, reducing it's weight in the process. But even with all that extra protection your skull and other "stuff" that protects your brain, it is still pretty vulnerable to injuries. That injury can come from outside of your body, or from inside, like in the case of some sort of virus attacking your brain. Your brain is divided into specialized regions, that may or may not interact with each other to produce a given action. So, let's say that a virus attack and damaged, say, the part of your brain that is in control of giving you the ability to understand and talk understandable language, then you will not be able to talk or understand anyone's speech, because the part of the brain controlling that is damaged. So you see that the brain is still pretty vulnerable, so we need to do our part to protect our brain and spinal cord. God has given us the protection necessary, like the skull, but we must also protect our brain and spinal cord the best we can.

P.S. : I mostly gathered the information to create this post from Crash Course. If you don't know 'em, check out their youtube channel, they are amazing.