Nervous System General Overview - Imaluop

Hi, we are going to discuss the nervous system general overview which is a very important system in animals for coordinating among different body parts. Nervous system is very important also for making the animals aware about their surroundings through various sensory receptors which take external stimuli and help to understand various external conditions.

Nervous systems spread throughout the body through their web like nerve networks which collect external or internal stimuli and transmit them upto brain where they are analysed and then animals react.

Table of Contents

Different Parts of Nervous System:

Depending upon the nature and function of different areas of Nervous System we can categorise them into three parts which we will discuss one by one.

Central Nervous System:

It is the major component of our nervous system which has a brain and spinal cord, we will discuss the function of the central nervous system in the next section.

Peripheral Nervous System:

Our central nervous system performs major decision making functions in our body but it is not possible for the central nervous system to reach all the body parts. Different nerves originate from the central nervous system and reach to different body parts through the nerve network called the peripheral nervous system.

Autonomous Nervous System:

It is a specific type of nervous system which handles different types of important functions in special situations they are two types sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system.

Function of Nervous System:

Different parts of Nervous System perform different types of roles in our body and their aggregate functions represent the function of the whole nervous system.

Function of Different Brain Parts:

Brain is responsible for processing all nervous impulses and different parts of the brain help in different ways to analyse any data, store in memory and retrieve them at the time when it is required.

Functions of Cerebral Cortex:

It is a very important part of the brain because it processes some very important areas like logical thinking, comprehension of any language, voluntary movement and deep thinking.

Functions of Cerebellum:

When we perform different activities we can balance our body, it is due to the presence of cerebellum and cerebellum also help to maintain body posture.

Functions of Hypothalamus:

It is a very important part of the brain because some vital functions are possible for this special part of the brain. When we do not take food for a long time we feel hunger, when we do not drink water for a long time we feel thirst is due to the function of hypothalamus.

Homeostasis is a great feature for higher animals and hypothalamus helps to maintain the constant temperature despite the variation of external environment temperature.

Functions of Medulla Oblongata:

Medulla oblongata or brain stem is a place for some vital receptors like the respiratory centre, receptors for measuring blood pressure.

Function of Thalamus:

Thalamus integrates sensory and motor information and then it forwarded to the cerebral cortex and then it sent to the spinal cord.

Functions of Limbic System:

It is a centre for processing emotional situations and very important for learning and processing of memory.

Functions of Autonomic Nervous System:

Autonomous Nervous System work on different organs and they effect in two different ways on the same organ through their two components sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic nervous system works in normal situation like in case of relaxed conditions while sympathetic nervous system show its activity during stressful situations.

Parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system works in opposite ways for example when parasympathetic nervous system try to slow down the heart rate while the sympathetic nervous system try to increase the heart rate during stressful situations.

Parasympathetic nervous system keeps our organ in energy saving mode when we feel relaxed but when we remain in stress our sympathetic nervous system affects the organ in such a way so that we can cope with the stress conditions.

Reference: Nervous System General Overview

Nervous System General Overview – Imaluop