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Monday 8 June 2015

The Nervous System

Most people are very familiar with the term "nervous system", but why have we evolved to have one? The overall job of the nervous system is to coordinate what we're doing. In fact, unicellular (single celled) organisms are thought of as the basics of our cells - 'bags' of chemicals. Obviously, we're not single celled and we have more than 3.7x10^23 cells and our body has to coordinate every one of them and assign them specific jobs. And that's what the job of the nervous system falls to - along with the endocrine system it produces hormones which act as biological catalysts. This leads to every cell having a completely different job.
Scientists split up the nervous system into two parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Through years and years of observations scientists were able to determine that the spinal cord branches out into nerves across the body which they later called the peripheral nervous system, and to differentiate the two parts, named the spinal cord and brain collectively as the central nervous system. 

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