On Your Nerves

Under a microscope, neurons look fascinating and strange. What neurons actually do and how electric signals are sent from your brain throughout your body is incredibly complex. In fact, it's seems safe to assume that the human brain itself is the most complex thing in the entire universe--not to mention the arrangement of your brain working with your central and peripheral nervous systems! Science discovers one new astounding mystery after another when examining the makeup of the human brain and neurons. Like many things in science, the more we learn, the more we realize that what we've discovered barely scratches the surface regarding the complexities of life.

When it comes to the brain and neurology, we have to face the fact that this incredible process that keeps your body functioning and allows your mind to keep thinking consciously and unconsciously has to have been intentionally designed. Exactly how the mysterious neurosystem works to keep the target of life in its sights is far beyond any one's comprehension. And, honestly, how anyone could stay committed to the idea that this came about by random evolution is also way beyond understanding--at least my own.

As you probably already know, the neurons composing the brain and nerves cause body parts to move and sense things by firing electrical impulses through the neural network. This is comparable to the way the wiring system throughout your house carries the electric circuit that flows to and from your appliances and makes them work. One big difference is that your body, while much smaller than a house, has a far more complex electrical system carrying out far more simultaneous functions. Therefore, all the wiring in our bodies--our nervous system--has to be packed a lot tighter.

Think about a particular part of your house's electrical setup that does have more tightly packed wiring, say your entertainment system. Now imagine all those wires and power cords behind that system stripped of their insulation. If all that wiring were bare, it would be bad news. No way your electronics would work properly, if at all. Hot exposed wires would short out your electronics and maybe even set your living room on fire. Thank goodness for the rubbery insulation that protects each wire from the electrical actions of the others, allowing the whole system to operate according to design.

Did you know that there's a similar type of insulation designed to keep your neurological wiring from shorting out? Most neuron cells have within their strange compositions a thin fiber called an axon. The axon is much like a wire that connects its neuron to other neurons which are connected to other neurons and so on, making up the complex electrical system of your body. The possibility for precise, stable neuron to neuron communications, or "action potentials," in which electrical impulses efficiently fire within your brain and throughout your nervous system, requires these biological wire fibers--axons--to be properly insulated. So isn't it neat that the part of the axon that conducts electrical impulses and relays the corresponding information to other neurons is carefully and masterfully insulated in non-conductive stuff? Neurobiologists call this non-conductive tubing around the axon the myelin sheath.

Of course there are significant differences between the rubber of electrical wiring and the biological properties of the myelin sheath. The non-conductivity of rubber and other insulators is pretty easy to understand. Rubber is "airy" material. It's not very dense, so the chain reaction that maintains electricity has trouble surviving rubber. The biochemistry that makes the myelin sheath non-conductive, on the other hand, is far more complex and mystifying.

So, naturally, things can really go haywire for the neurosystem if a person's myelin sheathing is malformed or deteriorates. Neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis are caused by this deterioration, usually when the body's own immune system breaks down the myelin for some reason. It causes the person with MS to lose some degree of control of certain muscles and/or thinking processes because their nerves start to "short circuit."

Nevertheless, when the big bundle of wires composing your nervous system is healthy and functioning as designed, the electrical impulses continue to flow nice and smooth, moment to moment, giving you the ability to move without thinking about it, and even to think without thinking about it. But as we're intellectually stimulated from the electrical stimulation of neurons, do you think that it all came from chance? If so, I find that quite "shocking!"