The central nervous system includes the nerves of the brain and spinal cord.

The peripheral nervous system includes sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves and
motor nerves, which innervate skeletal muscle.

Nerve cells, like all cells, have a membrane potential. The inside of the cell is negatively
charged while the outside is positive.

This separation of charge is due to the concentration of positively charged sodium and
potassium ions outside the cell and negatively charged proteins inside the cell.

What’s special about a nerve cell is that its membrane potential can change in response to
sensory stimuli such as sound, light, touch, and chemicals released from another nerve.

In response to the stimulus, the nerve cell opens or closes ion channels, called gates,
which change its permeability to sodium and potassium. Positively charged sodium ions
rush inside the cell, making the inside less negative. This is called depolarization.

Nerves communicate with each other chemically by sending signals, or neurotransmitters,

via the axon. The first nerve is the presynaptic. The second is the postsynaptic.

The synapse is the point of junction between two neurons.

If a nerve cell’s depolarization is great enough then the nerve fires an action potential.

The postsynaptic cell receives the signals at the synapse. If the result is positive and
depolarization occurs, the postsynaptic nerve fires an action potential and transmission
continues.

The action potential is exactly the same in all nerves that fire; the signal travels down the
nerves to stimulate another nerve, a target organ (such as muscle fiber), or a gland.

Nerve cells also may be inhibited from firing. This occurs when a stimulus causes the
cell to become more permeable to potassium, and positive potassium ions leave the cell.
In this case, the inside of the cell becomes more negative, or hyperpolarized.

Hyperpolarization prevents the nerve from firing an action potential.

Fatty insulation called myelin covers the entire axon, except at certain spaces called
nodes. Action potentials can jump very fast from node to node, a process called
salutatory conduction.

If the myelin sheath is destroyed, as with multiple sclerosis, transmission of an action

potential slows, because it is forced to spread down the entire axon.
When nerve transmission is interrupted, as with spinal cord injury, the brain cannot
communicate with the muscles. Likewise, if synaptic transmission is interrupted, brain
cells and other nerve cells cannot communicate.