Neuron+-+ES

=Introduction= toc Your body needs all parts of your body to work, but most parts rely on a single type of cell, perhaps the most important cell in your body, the neuron. The neurons’ structures allows it to communicate with nearly every part of your body. Neurons vary in different parts of the body, yet all 3 types follow the same steps communicate with each other. If this type of cell is damaged, by anything, it can have severe consequences, or just a lot of constant pain, neither is good. The importance of these topics will be given in detail in the following sections: = Structure of a neuron = A neuron is made up of 3 basic parts, the axon, the cell body, and the dendrites. Each plays a role in how neurons works. To start the topic of neurons we will answer the question, What is a neuron? Neurons are usually microscopic, but they can be lengthy. Despite their generally small size they allow your body to work. Made of bundles of cell strands, which are really just conductors, neurons transmit signals throughout your body that tell muscles to move, allow you to be conscious, and to simply have memories. The cell body is the main part of a neuron because it contains __the nucleus__. The nucleus, like in all other cells, tells the cell what to do. However there are other parts located on the cell body. __D____endrites__, minute strings located on the edge of the cell body, pick up impulses from other cells and deliver them to the rest of the cell. Generally the cell body is located at then end or in the middle of the neuron. Axons are the main length of a neuron. They are located in the center of the neuron and carry the impulse along the majority of the cells length. According to Wikipedia, longer axons, that can span up to 3 feet, have __myelin sheaths__ that act as an insulator for the impulse traveling through the neuron. Axons allow electrical energy to travel through them simply by being a conductor, like a metal. __Synapses__ are similar to axons because they carry the impulse over a shorter distance but at the end, instead of transferring the impulse to another part of the cell, they put the impulse in little chemical balls that are then picked up by a different cell.

= Type of neurons = There are 3 types of neurons: inter neurons, sensory neurons, and motor neurons. These are divided into two categories, as an article titled, The __Anatomy of Neuro__n, mentioned, the inter neurons, as anyone could guess, are part of the inter nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord. Motor neurons and Sensory neurons are part of your [|peripheral nervous system], which is essentially the outermost part of your nervous system. Your body relies on them greatly, to carry out many actions or to receive information your body needs all 3 of these neuron types. __Sensory neurons__ are located anywhere where your 5 senses take place(eg. nose, mouth etc.)and mentioned by an article about neurons made by Science Daily, each sense has a variation of the cell and some senses use bundles of cells to create impulses. They pick up information from outside your body and based on what they pick up on they will send an impulse to your brain. This impulse varies in strength based on how severe whatever outside your body is(eg. a fly will spark little, but a cut will send stronger signals). Returning to the topic of sensory neurons relating with senses, sensory neurons are specialized based on what their job is. Sensory neurons in the nose have a different structure than ones in the arm, for instance. Yet they all have similarities such as all using their cell body to create impulses. Vocabulary: Nucleus- Part of a cell that controls the cell. Myelin sheath- A insulator for axons. Ion- An atom with more or less electrons than protons making it positively or negatively charged.

In contrast to sensory neurons __inter neurons__ do not create impulses but instead decide where they go. Despite that being their exact job a single inter neuron cannot complete the task. The large mass of inter neurons in your body work together to decide things. Neurons in the brain and spinal cord are especially good at this because they are more organized into groups. For instance, any individual's brain is divided into parts, each of these parts, weather the part that allows you to be conscious or lets you see, is a group of inter neurons that decides things. Motor neurons are what allow you to move. Instead of sending impulses to another cell they send it to a muscle. The muscle expands and contracts varying on how strong the impulse is. What allows this to happen is the flow of ions produced by the cell causing channels to open in the muscle. These opened paths are larger than closed channels, therefore the sum of all the added space in the muscle causes an expansion. __Motor neurons__ are slightly different in shape, there dendrites spread at along small portions of the muscles length.

= The impulses steps = The impulse a sensory neuron creates follows a general path: Returning to the topic of how an impulse travels, each step has more details, despite the vague description given. How a sensory neuron starts an impulse is obviously more complex than a cell simply starting it. Channels located in sensory neurons open and close based on outside events. These channels allow the flow of the positive or negative __ions__. In reality the impulse is a flow of ions travelling through neurons in the steps previously mentioned, but that is also what an impulse is. = Disorders of a neuron = A surprisingly common sight in medical science is neurons not working properly. Generally this is because, because of something in the path of an impulse, the impulse in not strong enough. Sometimes caused by the lack of ions released in sensory neurons, or even something as simple as not having enough neurons, of any specific type, or of all types. The end point is that many things affect neurons in a negative way. Despite the many disorders, 3 different locations of disorders will be explained as well as some disorders occurring in them. each being similar we will discuss how each of the three main types of neurons can go wrong. Sensory neurons are susceptible to many different things. Generally there is simply not enough of them, something that is commonly seen in elderly, because the neurons die with them. Without a sufficient amount of sensory neurons not everything can be picked up from the outside world which may make it seem that older people are not as aware of things going on around them. Another common fault in sensory neurons is the lack of __ions__ being released into the cycle of creating an impulse. Therefore there will be a lesser amount of ions going throughout the whole cycle. With weaker impulses traveling through your nervous system it will be generally harder to do anything. Inter neurons are subject to many problems, like sensory neurons, but once again only a few will be described. An inter neuron in simply defined words is a neuron connecting sensory and motor neurons. If an inter neuron is not working properly and cannot interact with different variations of a neuron then it does not serve its purpose as an inter neuron. Many things can cause this lack of communication between cells. While this doesn't always happen widespread throughout the body, an inter neuron could simply have been injured from impact causing a certain part to not work, synapses bent could not receive impulses, axons bending could mean the neuron isn't connected to another cell at all. While these are physical interactions with inter neurons chemical ones take place to. For example, if not taking in enough fat(which rarely happens) myelin sheaths could not fully form meaning that cell would be more likely to suffer impacts, or share its impulse with another cell, that should not always receive impulses from the “broken” neuron. Motor neurons generally aren't prone to as many disorders because its generally the muscle it’s connected to not working well. They are however susceptible to the synapses not picking up enough of a signal as well as not being fully connected to a muscle weather from impact or the lack of binding chemicals. Dendrites in a motor neuron sometimes release excessive or not enough ions into the muscle causing a widespread lack or excessive amount of movement.
 * Sensory neurons start the impulse when something from the outside world sparks it.
 * After travelling through the sensory neuron the cells synapses let out chemical bubbles carrying positive or negative charges.
 * The next cell, generally an inter neuron picks up these bundles. As soon as the dendrites read the bundles of chemicals it sends it to the cell nucleus, which then decides whether or not to send it down the axon.
 * The impulse travels down the length of the axon which sometimes breaks into many smaller dendrites. The impulse distributes evenly among the synapses which then sends out the many bundles of positive or negative impulses.
 * The impulse continues these steps sometimes millions of times to do the simplest of commands. Moving a finger for example. The reason the nervous system has the capability of doing commands so quickly, despite having to go through so many steps is because it has been only refining over the course of over 4.5 billion years.[[image:http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSVw9A9TFzhBaP1kis2TREEVzAeSUTt-_ScCu305od5lnfLYwuu caption="The direction of an impulse through a neuron http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSVw9A9TFzhBaP1kis2TREEVzAeSUTt-_ScCu305od5lnfLYwuu"]]

=The larger path of an impulse= The larger path of an impulse travels throughout your whole body. This path varies for different situations, but it follows the same steps generally. Starting at the sensory neurons, working its way to inter neurons, lastly finding its way to motor neurons, or being kept in inter neurons(in the form of memories). That is the basic layout for the larger path of an impulse. Starting at a group of sensory neurons, that could be located all around your body, the impulse starts, triggered by any event outside of the human body. The sensory neurons pass on the impulse to the outermost layer of inter neurons which essentially connect your body parts’ neurons to the brain or spinal cord. The switch of neuron types carrying the impulse, surprisingly, does not spark any complex procedure. The Ions released by dendrites can be comprehended by all forms of the cell.  The second step of an impulses path is generally the movement of the impulse throughout your body as well as your spinal cord or brain deciding what to do with the impulse. This step is more complex and we do not fully understand it yet, how the brain can make complex decisions using inputs from many different senses, that is. What we do know is that the brain has sections for each sense, and if, in this example, only one sense is being used, then the brain likely analyses the data received then makes a decision off of it. However when multiple senses are being used, while it is the same general idea of the brain analyzing data, the topic still bewilders scientists, because we do not yet know how the brain can sort impulses of different senses. The finale of an impulses path is the storing of the impulse or a motor neuron using it. If stored, then once again we do not fully understand it, but we assume the brains memory is similar to a computer in the way it has information stored in it. After processing an impulse the brain likely takes this impulse and traps it in a neuron the can only be activated with chemicals, __dopamine__ being a good example, because it allows the flow of ions in a neuron. Motor neurons are the simpler variable because they tend to react to what they receive in a given way, releasing impulses into a muscle to make it move. They receive this impulse from the very complex brain that makes a decision for how much the muscle should move, which is generally decided by the strength of the impulse. = Ending = Neurons are of great importance to your body. They allow nearly everything to happen in your body and are shaped perfectly for this, yet they vary in shape to meet the needs of that certain part of the body. However, every single of the trillions of the neurons in your body is susceptible to disease, impacts, and much more less obvious things. So while medical science focusing on neurons evolves, you will have to know what treatments in this area will do to you, which can only be understood if you have an understanding of neurons.

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