The neuron: a talkative cell
Electricity and chemistry.
These two notions are difficult for me to comprehend, I don’t have a “scientific” brain, so trying to understand how the neurons communicate between them has been a complicated process. It is still.
I know that the chances of this being read by a specialist, are next to none, but the idea that this text is out there, gives me a sense of responsibility, one I wouldn’t have by writing it in a file which would remain in my computer and never be posted anywhere.
I’m imagining explaining this to someone who has no idea about this subject. That always makes me “arrange” my thoughts in a certain way. It forces me to.
The brain is associated with the word “chemical”. Because there are so many chemicals inside it, produced by it, used by its entire system in order to work. As I’m writing this I have no idea if I’ll get to a point where I could actually enumerate them, or even if I would want to. I guess I want to go with the flow and see up to what point my curiosity and need of understanding, take me.
So, chemical. Chemistry. Brain.
We say that a relationship between two people is about chemistry, and that, no matter the sex. It’s interesting because, in the end, it is indeed a purely chemical process that generates our behavior. The complexity is enormous, of course, but I like to think that by using simple words and by making associations, one can understand the main ideas and not drown in all the information.
So, what I understood about the neurons is that they are triggered by electrical signals which are created by chemical substances and when they send messages, they do it through other chemical substances. So we have chemistry-electricity-chemistry-electricity again. The chain of communication between neurons, here it is.
A neuron is a funny little cell, it has a body (soma) a tail (the axon) and ramifications of extremities: some of them linked to the body (dendrites) and some of them linked to axon (axon terminals). The way it communicates with another neuron is by…ALMOST touching it. The distance between two neurons is infinitely small, we’re talking about nanometers here, I have no idea how to describe it, and don’t even want to. I’ll let my imagination take care of that. But there is a distance, a small gap, and that is called a synapse.
The extremities, triggered by the electrical signal, send information to other(s) neurons, and that, through their extremities: dendrites capture information, it then goes through the axon and is transmitted to another neuron through the axon terminals that connect to another neuron’s dendrites. All that through synapses. And that is the most simplified version of what really happens, because it consists of so much more (the combination dendrites/axon terminals/body). But at the end, the result is the same: information passes on. There is no “maybe” about this, it’s either a yes or a no, and that all happens within the neuron, between the soma and the axon, an area called the gap junction.
Also, there are three types of neurons: peripherical ones, motor ones and the interneurons and depending on their function, they are more or less developed: they can be unipolar (one axon, one series of dendrites), bipolar (prolonged axon, two series of dendrites) and multipolar (axon splitting in two, several series of dendrites)
The most important ones are interneurons, who are located only in the brain and the spinal cord, whereas the others, as their names indicate it, are located in the spinal cord, the periphery of the body and at a muscle level.
The interneurons are “relay” neurons as they allow for the information to be passed on from and to other types of neurons and also communicate between themselves. Needles to say that they are the ones that create the most connections simultaneously. I was astounded when I found out that there wasn’t only a “one to one” type of communication.. and then I learned about the different types of neurons…when I understood what the interneurons do, I got the whole picture.
So an enormous amount of information can be sent from and to different sources, all at the same time.
The question is, when it comes to the connections that are done only at the cortex level, what happens to all that information? Does it go as far as possible and does it make it all the way (a series of neurons) or not? Well…not. Some of the information generates enough “electrical power” to go through a series of neurons, some of it not. What does it depend on? I have no idea. I still need to study on that and I guess I’ll get back to my “today” self, explaining more about the whole thing.
My guess is that information passes further and further when it’s really needed and in that case it generates a whole series of “sparkles”. In other words: if the individual thinks it’s not worthed, it will never go further. And this part, is for me, the most important, because it’s not about the “how” bout about the “why”, and the « long term why ». The information may go through once, or twice, but if the electrical signal is not repeated enough, it will no longer fire.
This is about neuroplasticity: the key to mental growth.
We’ve all heard about the grey matter (and there’s also white matter: neurons’ bodies are the ones that form the grey matter and the axons create the white one..) It seems that having it is not so bad, it’s a good sign even. The more the better! Well….not really. Another fact that is really interesting and to be taken into consideration: it’s not because there is a lot of grey matter that the connections are numerous
When the decision to send an information is made, a connection is made, a path is created and keeping that path, enriching it, is up to us, up to our capacity to associate ideas and thoughts, up to our curiosity and need of knowledge. This is what IS SUPPOSED to make us the superior species. But I will not deviate by going into what we are supposed to be and what we turned out to be in the end, all that in spite of the endless possibilities that this famous grey matter, gives us…it will be sad. For now, I just imagine that there is a whole universe in our heads, and everything is possible, if only, IF ONLY, every day we would want to be a better version than yesterday’s one