What does the central nervous system include?

We may not know much about the central nervous system. The central nervous system plays a coordinating role for our entire body and balances our physical movements and language output. It can be said that the central nervous system is an important part of our entire body. If there is a problem with our central nervous system, our entire body and brain will not be able to work normally. Maybe everyone is more interested in what the central nervous system includes. Let us understand what the central nervous system includes!

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The main part of the nervous system. It is often located in the central axis of the animal's body and is composed of distinct cerebral ganglia, nerve cords or brain and spinal cord as well as the connecting components between them. In the central nervous system, a large number of nerve cells gather together to organically form networks or circuits. The central nervous system receives incoming information from all parts of the body, integrates and processes it into coordinated motor output, or stores it in the central nervous system to become the neural basis of learning and memory. Human consciousness, psychology, and thinking activities are also functions of the central nervous system.

The central nervous system of vertebrates The vertebrate brain is located in the cranial cavity and the spinal cord is located in the vertebral canal. The central nervous system of vertebrates develops from the neural tube on the dorsal side of the body during the embryonic period. The head end of the neural tube becomes the brain, and the tail end becomes the spinal cord. The neural tube cavity develops into the ventricles in the brain and into the central canal in the spinal cord. The brain initially consists of three brains: the forebrain, midbrain, and rhombencephalon, which later evolve into the telencephalon, diencephalon, midbrain, cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata.

Many nerve fibers in the central nervous system of vertebrates are myelinated. When they are gathered together, they appear white to the naked eye and are called white matter. On the contrary, the area where nerve cell bodies are concentrated appears gray to the naked eye. It is composed of a large number of nerve cell bodies and a large number of synapses on the dendrites and is called gray matter. In the central nervous system, gray matter masses with clear boundaries, which are composed of clusters of nerve cell bodies with the same function, are called nerve nuclei. The neural activities in the spinal cord are mainly reflex activities carried out on a segmental basis; however, many activities of vertebrates are holistic, which depends on the connection between the brain and the spinal cord. There are many longitudinally running nerve fiber bundles in the central nervous system. There are also many connecting fibers between the left and right sides of the brain and spinal cord. The thickest of these is the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres of the cerebral hemispheres.

The spinal cord still retains the original neural tube pattern, with gray matter surrounding the central canal and white matter surrounding the surface of the gray matter. The dorsal part of the spinal cord develops from the alar plate of the neural tube during the embryonic period and mainly receives afferent information from receptors. The ventral part develops from the placode and its function is motile. The position of the cranial nerve nuclei in the brainstem is basically similar to the arrangement of the spinal cord in terms of their sensory and motor properties, but due to changes in the shape of the ventricles, it is, of course, not as obvious and orderly as that of the spinal cord. Some non-sensory and non-motor nerve nuclei in the brainstem, such as the red nucleus and olivary nucleus, are located in different parts of the brainstem. Due to the presence of ventricles and numerous nerve bundles and conduction bundles, the structure of the brainstem is much more complex than that of the spinal cord (see table). The gray matter of the cerebrum and cerebellum is mainly distributed in the surface layers, called the cerebral cortex and cerebellar cortex respectively; while the white matter is in the deep layers.

The above content introduces us to the question of what the central nervous system includes. I believe that everyone has solved the confusing questions in their hearts! We should learn more about this and understand how our body works normally, which will be very helpful for us to regulate our physical health in the future.