Okay, here we are at Nervous System Principle #4: Specialization. Lots of rich info here and a bit of foreshadowing into the complexity of the system.
"Specialization"
Reflecting its diverse tasks, the nervous system is specialized, from the single neuron to each brain region. Specialized subsystems analyze sensations. They differ in some ways, but data processing is progressive and networked in all. Neurons and the neuroglia have special shapes and roles, but both enjoy all criteria for cells and work in concert. Less obvious but equally specialized are subsystems for other functions: sleep-wakefulness, alertness, attention, affect, collating pages of a report, reading out loud from a book, self-awareness, brain damage control, and so on ad infinitum.
Ubiquitous specializations include those for high nerve conduction velocity (large axon diameter, thick myelin sheath), space-saving bundling (small-axon diameter, thin myelin sheath, shared sheaths), short latency response (monosynaptic reflex), staggered, persistent latencies (parallel side chaining of long-axoned neurons), dependability (neuron redundancy), feature analysis (parallel processing), effect monitoring (feedback circuits), and force multiplication (feed-forward circuits). The neurons performing such tasks and the neuroglia backing them up are as specialized as these many diversified services. For neurons and the neuroglia, form indeed reflects function."
Now, this is just getting interesting! Looking at the paragraph above, I had to stop and do a little research about these specialized subsystems. To be honest, that will take SEVERAL posts and not something I want to go into now because ...well, I don't understand it fully. Later on that.
Anyway, here's what I gathered from this excerpt:
1) The nature of the Nervous System is diversity in its activities, so this necessitates subsystems that are delegated for each task with the accompanying specialized "equipment" of neurons and neuroglia for support.
2) Different subsystems analyze internal and external sensations.
3) Even though the neurons and neuroglia (support staff for neurons) have different shapes and sizes, they are still cells and work together for the greater good of function.
3) The nervous systems subsystem tasks are numerous and make up activities like wakefulness, brain damage control, alertness, attention, etc.
4) The second paragraph gets into the specifics of how the specializations are combined and their resultant activity like feed forward and feedback circuits. We see how this is vitally important to the entire body in terms of organism survival and homeostasis.
Another WOW moment for me as this Principle touches on how the nervous system is ORGANIZED so that it can carry out functions.
As promised, I'm keeping these posts shorter.
Lookout tomorrow for Principle #5: PURPOSEFULNESS
Questions or comments, please let know.
In mind, body and spirit,
Will
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