Do you think that we can live without our nervous systems? Probably not. So here are five nervous system facts for kids.
The nervous system is made up of your brain, spinal cord, sensory organs, and nerves. The nerves send signals to the brain travelling up the spinal cord. They can send messages faster than we can think, so sometimes our body reacts before we know why. A great example of this is removing your hand from a hot surface before we feel the burn, this is because the nerves felt it and very quickly told the brain that we needed to move.
Neurons are cells with transport and store information and they are the cells which make up the brain. There are around 100 billion neurons in the brain always taking in new information and reacting to the world around us. There are only around 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way which is the galaxy we live in. That’s a lot of stars and even more neurons.
When we live in the world our experiences are shaped by our five senses. The five senses are:
Sight – we see using our eyes, our eyes connect to the ocular nerve which sends messages to your brain telling it what you see.
Hearing – we hear using our ears, our ears send signals to the brain through the cochlear nerve that tells the brain what you hear.
Smell – we smell using our nose, the olfactory nerve in our nose sends signals to the brain to tell it what you smell.
Taste – when we eat or drink we taste using our tongue, the cranial nerves tell the brain what you are tasting.
Touch – We touch things with any area of our skin, the sensory nerves which lie under the skin tell the brain what you are touching.
Your nervous system is always working and it controls everything in the body, you might have to think about looking, smelling, tasting, and touching things but the nervous system does even more than that. Your nervous system also controls breathing, your heartbeat, how the blood flows around your body, and digestion of food.
Your brain and the nervous system even work while you are asleep to keep your body running until you wake up. Sleep is very important for your brain’s health. The brain uses the time you are sleeping to process the events of the day. This means the brain can sort your memories into long term memories and you can process all the emotions and experiences you had that day. Then when you wake up your brain is restored and ready to experience a new day.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about nervous system as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic this organ in human body is, you can move on to learn about other ones like: Brain, Eyes, Nose, Teeth, Ears, The Respiratory System, urinary system, skeletal system and cardiovascular system.
Why not subscribe to our LearningMole Library for as little as £1.99 per month to access over 2800 fun educational videos.
Leave a Reply