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I'm rather glad to be discussing the idea of the action potential and the ways that signals and responses actually interact.

I've had some trouble picturing the nervous system in terms of analogies (since, as a humanities major, I tend to start from details and move towards an image, not the other way around). However, when I compare this analogy to all the other things we've been talking about and the other images we've looked at -- the leech nervous system's independent responses, the anatomy of the brain, the parts of a neuron -- I do find it quite useful. I have been wanting a way to account for the fact that there seems to be a gradient of responses and levels of response. Sometimes reactions to stimuli don't seem that great, and sometimes things happen without any stimuli but seem much more obvious externally.

I appreciate rdelacruz's concept of a line of batteries connected to one another. To me, it's very helpful to picture multiple batteries, since, even with the I-function, I still tend to picture neurons as independent input/output boxes and to forget to look at the box that boxes them ALL in. At any rate, what I want most right now is a clearer explanation of how or why signals can start from inside the nervous system. Since all the neurons are connected to some degree, can we not still say that the outside (stimuli) has some effect?