Introduction

Introduction to Nervous Coordination

How an animal behaves in its surroundings is very important for it to stay alive.

This behavior depends on how different parts of its body work together like a team.

Without the different body parts working together properly, the body's work would happen anyhow and would not be connected at all.

This means the body parts must work at the right time and in the right place.

Coordination is the process of linking different activities of an animal in time and space.

It is how the body makes different activities happen together in an orderly way.

The body uses the nervous system and sense organs to do this, and it also uses special body chemicals called hormones which are produced by endocrine glands.

The nervous system and the hormone system work together to control all the biological activities inside big animals made of many cells.

The Neuron

The tiny piece that builds up the whole nervous system is called a nerve cell.

A neuron is the basic building block of the nervous system.

It is the smallest unit that makes the nervous system work.

A neuron has a thick main part called the cell body and some tiny hair-like parts called nerve fibers.

A bundle of many long nerve fibers joined together is what we call a nerve.

In the nervous system, information moves around as electrical signals called nerve impulses which run through the nerve fibers.

Components of the Nervous System

All complex animals have a nervous system that contains some very important parts.

These parts include the brain which acts as the main processing center, nerves that take messages from the sense organs to the brain, and nerves that take messages from the brain to the parts that will take action.

Sense receptors are very important because they help the body notice changes happening inside or outside.

Sensory receptors play an important role by detecting stimuli from both the external and internal environments.

They act like message collectors and you can usually find them inside our sense organs like eyes and ears.

Effectors are the parts like muscles and glands that do what the brain tells them to do.

Effectors are muscles and glands that respond to nerve impulses from the brain.

They respond by doing things like moving the muscles or releasing spit and other body chemicals.

The actions of these effectors include making muscles tight, producing enzymes, and releasing hormones.

The nervous system is shared into two big groups: the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system.