HOW NEURONS COMMUNICATE

Your brain can serve as your body’s command center because neurons communicate with each other. They relay messages throughout your body and power all of your thoughts and actions. Neurons talk to each other using both electrical and chemical signals. When you stub your toe, sensory neurons create electrical signals, called action potentials, which travel rapidly down a neuron. Those electrical signals, however, cannot cross the gap between two neurons. In order to communicate, the action potential is transformed into a chemical message, which crosses the gap, called a synapse. The release of chemical messengers can trigger a second action potential in the neuron on the other side of the synapse, conveying the message onward or, when the action potential triggers the release of a chemical messenger that blunts the transmission of a signal, quelling the message. This happens over and over, and with repeated activity, the synapse grows stronger, so the next message is more likely to get through. That way, neurons learn to pass on important messages and ignore the rest. This is how our brains learn and adapt to an ever-changing world.