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MEL's picture

Input/Output Model and Neurons

 

Our conversation this week clarified some of my confusion from last week. I think now that I fully understand what an input is (a stimulus from outside the nervous system) I understand how the nervous system can generate an output even when there is no input. I think that the leech example is very powerful and really helps support this idea.  At first it was hard to believe that observations in the isolated nervous system of actually corresponded to the leech's swimming behavior. I found our discussion about neurons very interesting I was very surprised to find out that  99.99% of neurons are interneurons.  This shows that our nervous system’s main purpose is to deal with stimuli from within the body not from outside the body.  I also found it interesting how we actually assigned the boxes and arrows connecting the boxes to places in the brain. The central gray region acts as the “boxes” and the white regions act as the “arrows connecting the boxes”. It’s nice to finally see how our input/output model fits in the brain.

 

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