Culverhay School Rush Hill Bath BA2 2QL Royal Military Academy Sandhurst CAMBERLEY Surrey GU15 4PQ

7th November Dear Maj Gen Marriott, From your recent tests we have discovered you have an abnormality in your nervous system and we are going to tell you about it. The Central Nervous System consists of the Brain and Spinal Cord. It contains millions of neurones (nerve cells). If you slice through some fresh brain or spinal cord you will find some areas appear grey whilst other areas appear rather white. The white matter consists of axons it appears white because it contains a lot of fatty material called myelin. This means that nerve cells can conduct electrical messages without interfering with one another. The grey matter consists of cell bodies and the branched dendrites which effectively connect them together. So this area is mainly cytoplasm of nerve cells which is why it appears white. The Motor Neurones Motor neurones are made up of 3 main areas: The cell body containing the nucleus and mitochondria. An axon is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell or neuron that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma. An axon is one of two types of protoplasmic protrusions that extrude from the cell body of a neuron, the other type being dendrites. Axons are distinguished from dendrites by several features, including shape (dendrites often taper while axons usually maintain a constant radius), length and function. Dendrites are restricted to a small region around the cell body while axons can be much longer. They usually receive signals while axons usually transmit them. All of these rules have exceptions, however.

This is the structure of the motor neurones.

The Motor Units A motor unit is a single motor neuron and all of the corresponding muscle fibers it innervates; all of these fibers will be of the same type (either fast twitch or slow twitch). When a motor unit is activated, its entire fibers contract. Groups of motor units often work together to coordinate the contractions of a single muscle; all of the motor units that sub serve a single muscle are considered a motor unit pool. Larger motor units have stronger twitch tensions. The nerve impulse bounces along the myelin sheath, the thicker the myelin sheath the faster the nerve impulse travels.

Gradation of Contraction The central nervous system controls how strongly you contract your muscles: The electric wave comes from the brain and sends messages down spine in too motor unit through to the branches and contracts in the muscle, the more messages your brain sends the more it will contract, the less you send message the less it will contract. Hope this letter has answered your worries.

You Sincerely Dr SNoad