Talk:Nervous system/Archive 1

Missing info

Cells in a nervous system often because of their functions cannot metabolise proteins for energy in cellular respiration, and rely mostly on carbohydrates. If carbohydrates are lacking, the body must break down fat into fatty acids and glycerol, then the fatty acids into ketone bodies the cells can use.

the above section is not complete.esp first line.please look into it.

Please if you get the chance add some images which are pretty easy to find of the nervous system on google this would help those of us that need to see that object in front of us to better understand it. Also i feel the nervous system is too extensive for one person to be working on the subject alone, there are just way too many things the nervous system covers.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Northery84 (talk • contribs) .

• I created a diagram myself of the human nervous system and added it onto the article. Hopefully it adds on well to the article.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 00:33, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Restrict editing?

I suggest this page be restricted to editing by registered accounts, given the vandalism it has undergone. Robin S 19:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it looks like you and others have done a good job of catching it and reverting it, and I'm willing to keep an eye on the page as well. Usually Semi-protection is reserved for articles that are hit very hard by vandalism, e.g. so rapid fire it's hard to revert fast enough (like George W. Bush). It looks like this page has only been edited 5 times in the past three days, so I don't think it meets that. In my opinion it's best to avoid protecting and semi-protecting whenever possible, especially since people frequently edit as IPs and discover how fun it is (it's how I got involved). So I'd suggest holding off on semi-protection untill we run out of other options. delldot | talk 00:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Diabetes section seems odd

The final section on the relationship between diabetes and the nervous system seems problematic for a couple of reasons--for starters, it's so short that it's difficult to make sense of, but primarily it's completely out of the flow of the rest of the article, which is painfully obvious when you look at the table of contents. Surely there are hundreds of diseases that affect the nervous system, but just as surely this is not the place to discuss them. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say someone involved in the project included that text and the link in order to draw attention to it. Drlith 13:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Zootomy

I don't see how zootomy is especially "narrow" of a field. In any case, I felt neuroscience deserved mention as well. Since it is apparent that we will continue to conflict on various biology issues; I urge you to refrain from merely reverting and deleting my edits -- try to understand why I might want to make such an edit, and think of some way you could modify the edit so that it is more palatable to you. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Actually, I didn't "revert" your page, I merely deleted two (what I felt were) superfluous words. I left all of the rest of your edits perfectly intact. Please check the history. "Zootomy" is not a common term and if lay readers of Wikipedia come across that, they might genuinely wonder, why am I reading about the nervous system in zootomy? If you must include it, put it in a See also at the bottom of the page, and keep neuroscience in the "In ..." prefix section. Think about writing the article in Wikipedia:News style, keep the intro short, tight and to the point, and you can get detailed and technical later. This dittos for the changes to the DNA article.

I did actually try see what you were doing, but I don't think that every biology article, needs to have "In such-and-such discipline" before defining the term, especially when there's only one common context that it is normally used. It certainly has a place in disambiguation pages, or where there are multiple senses of a word, such as law (scientific law, vs "legal" law). I see that it useful to have the link for doing clever things with "What links" here and "Related articles", but there might be a better way of doing this than the "In ..." prefix at the beginning of the article. There is a new category system that is due to come online soon, hopefully that will help this problem. --Lexor 11:55, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I highly doubt anyone will wonder "is the zootomical nervous system different from what I want"; in any case, the addition of neuroscience will certainly clarify that. Technical articles should have prominent starting links back to their root academic discipline; to facilitate easier browsing. Lirath Q. Pynnor

My point is that zootomy is not a commonly known name of a discipline, I rarely hear it used at all these days (it gets a grand total of 779 hits on Google: perhaps you mean zoology, which is more well-known, gets about 1,260,000 Google hits?), but neuroscience is. I understood the usefulness of noting/linking the academic discipline (see my comments above), but including it at the beginning of the article in every article, isn't the best way (yes, in some cases I agree it is esp. to disambiguate it). The category system is designed for that. Meanwhile let's try and come up with a better way faciliate the goal you wish to achieve but preserve readability. I suggest linking from and including at the end of the article List of biology topics, I try and keep this list up-to-date, and the precise purpose of this page is to maintain such links. --Lexor 12:17, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This should be merged with central nervous system article. I made a few corrections and clarifications to this one. icut4u 18:36, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, the nervous system incorporates the central nervous system AND the periphreal nervous system. In "lower" animals, there's pretty much just "the nervous system". Sayeth 23:03, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Quite right, and hence no need for two...I would suggest one article to cover it all and a redirect function, thereby allowing those who go to either to get the information. A lot of redundancy, I think, but perhaps that's what people prefer, and, in any case, I do not want to tackle it myself. icut4u 23:54, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

there is an interesting fact that the nervous system evolution from coelentrata to vertibrata . a significant evolution is seen . net system in coelentrata , double cod system in nemotoda, brain formation in arthropoda, replacment of nervous system from below dig. system (in insects) to above dig. system in vertibrataRahul.goodboy 08:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)rahul.goodboy

Definition of Reflexes in "Parts of the Nervous System" seems odd

The current version of the article says that "The spine is the area where reflexes are made". I totally agree with this part. But I think the subsequent parts may not be completely correct in that context. In particular the example with the ball thrown at someone. What happens, when I throw a ball towards the head of a blind person for example? The ball would definitively hit the poor person. Thus in my opinion these "reflexes" require some involvement of the visual cortex and therefore cannot be processed in the spine alone.

I assume that the problem stems from the slightly sloppy use of the word "reflex" in everyday life, where it is used for describing situations like the one with the ball thrown at someone. But the reflexes that do not need any participation of the brain, are probably those like the one, which is tested when a physician hits the kneecap with his hammer and the lower leg involuntarily swings up. This might be a better example for what is probably meant in the section. --o.kayser-herold207.180.176.230 04:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

"...of a human'?

Why does this article start with "The Nervous system of a human..."? The article describes the nervous system of many organisms, so it should obviously say 'of an organism'! I'll change it to that, but if someone knows a much more specific term, please do change it. Kreachure 23:01, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Of an animal would be the best term - no other organisms have neurons. One could be more specific and say eumetozoa (all animals besides the sponges, but it the former is better. Richard001 11:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Humans to top

I put vertebrates (e.g. humans to top), because I assume that species is the most interesting. Besides, learning less complicated species first, in thought of interactively learning the human one, is not efficient (Gredler 1997). Mikael Häggström 12:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Terminology

A major problem with this article is its inconsistent use of terminology. Here is a table of common variations:

Main/scientific term	Other terms
Neuron	neurone	nerve cell
Action potential	nerve impulse	"message"
Glial cells	neuroglia	glia

So then, the question is, what terms should be used and what terms should be avoided? Clearly in the first case, "neuron" should be used instead of "nerve cell". "Neurone" should be avoided entirely, since it is rarely used in this and other articles. As for "action potential", it firstly isn't exactly synonymous with "nerve impulse". An action potential is generated independently in each cell, whereas "nerve impulse" refers to the overall series of electrical events involving multiple cells. It could be argued that "nerve impulse" is simply a less technical way of describing an action potential, but that's not necessarily correct. As for "glial cells", I personally prefer the shortened form, "glia". I'm sure there are many other terms that are used interchangeably in addition to the ones I've listed. The main point I'm trying to make is that this article (and all other articles) should consistently use the same set of terms, rather than randomly interchanging multiple terms. Not only are the various terms often not directly synonymous, but this lack of consistency only serves to confuse the reader. Fuzzform (talk) 19:15, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I introduced the term "nerve cells", so I adjusted those, my main focus there was to indicate that nerves are cells but that is already stated a few times on the page. I did not find any usage of the spelling "neurone" In the intro I have nerve impulse used in the more formal usage, because we are talking about the movement of signals from one neuron to another in the "system", it would be good to make the distinction you are making clearly in the article also - its a good point, that should be communicated there. Inconsistent usage of terms is a problem, and some times a common one on wikipedia when the topic uses many different terms and the article has been worked on by many people using diverse sources. Hardyplants (talk) 21:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Restructuring of article

This article is a gaping hole in our coverage of neuroscience topics -- a highly accessed article in a very crude state. As a start toward improving it, I've tried to impose some sort of rational structure on it. Nothing is fixed in stone, but if there any thoughts on the suitability of the structure, I would be interested in them. (The actual contents at this moment are largely pretty poor, but that will take time to fix.) Looie496 (talk) 20:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

The Microanatomy section begins by stating the nervous system is primarily made up of neurons, then goes on to say that it's 50/50 glials/neurons. Obviously the initial statement refers to the cells "doing the work" so to speak but it is confusing to readers. Please look at this when you are improving this article. Muslim Wookie (talk) 08:47, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:43, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

What about other bits of the Nervous system?

What about other parts of the nervous system. I wanted to know more about the gut and the heart which I believe are not purely passive and wondered if there are any other such complexes.Charleskenyon (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The gut and heart are not considered part of the nervous system, even though they are indeed electrically active. The gut is innervated by the enteric nervous system and the heart by other parts of the autonomic nervous system. Those are mentioned in the article, but if you have suggestions about how to make the article more useful, I'm definitely open to them. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 19:46, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

They do have autonomous regulatory function independent of the autonomic nervous system and are capable of basic learning although are instructed by the autonomic nervous system.
If I made an analogy to a company the higher levels of the brain are like directors they pass on directions to the lower brain levels and spinal cord and they do them or pass them on to the lowest level workers such as the heart and gut. The workers are workers because they are responsible for maintaining their environment they regulate it only going to higher management for more unusual cases. What I was wondering was are these the only low level workers or are there more? The kidneys for instance seem to have a large regulatory burden but where are the majority of neurons that carry out this work located somewhere near the kidneys (like heart and gut) or in the spine.
Sorry, perhaps I should have asked where all the neuron complexes are. I think saying where neurons complexes are and then describing what they do and how they interact is better than the historical semi arbitrary classification which is haphazardly based on hierarchy, function and nature of action.
Charleskenyon (talk) 09:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it is necessarily true that all of the body's regulatory systems are controlled by neurons; but really you're getting beyond my level of knowledge here. Any changes we make to the article would need to be based on published literature, but the autonomic nervous system is definitely not one of my strong points, and I can't rule out that there is literature that organizes things the way you like -- somebody would need to locate it before we could do anything, though. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

One little mistake

The last sentence of under the heading glial cells is incorrect. There are two types (not one type) of glial cells that myelinate axons: oligodendrocytes (CNS, many axons) and Schwann cells (PNS, one axon).

Maybe in the introduction put "Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system."

Additionally, the 2nd sentence under function is a glaring error. There are more than two basic ways that a cell can send a signal to another cell, for example, direct contact (juxtacrine signaling). For example, see notch signaling wiki. Also, paracrine and autocrine signaling. This should be clarified.

I would like to edit this article but I can't.

In the intrinsic pattern generation section, it discusses circadian rhythms. Should we include how this "genetic clock" works? Namely, that the protein expressed regulates itself. I guess it's not crucial.

Nowhere does it mention mental illnesses. Is that for a reason? Are we only including neurological diseases to keep it more "neuroscienceish" than "psychologyish"?

Also, I know nothing about editing articles, but shouldn't there be some "See also"s? Lots of other pages have these, and I can think of many that would be applicable. Some possibilities that seem logical to me include: Brain, Spinal Cord, Neuron, Nerve, Glial Cells, Neurotransmitter, Neurosurgery, Neurology, Neuroscience, etc.

I'm a senior undergraduate majoring in neuroscience. Grouphug (talk) 10:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful insights. I've made some edits to address most of these points. For the signaling methods, I simply corrected the oversimplifications without going into the details about other mechanisms. I think we don't need to go into pattern generators into more detail in this introductory page. I put a link to Psychiatry at the top of the pathology section, which provides a link without getting into a whole new section, although a case could be made for writing more. Most of the other pages you list as possible see also links are already linked within the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Grouphug. I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to edit the article -- it is semi-protected because of lots of vandalism, but it looks like you have enough total edits and an old enough account to qualify (unless you're editing through an anonymizing proxy). Regarding the points you make, I did a massive expansion of this article a couple of months ago, but there are undoubtedly things I missed or got wrong, so any fixes or enhancements are welcome. The thing that I feel is most urgently needed is a better section on development. Concerning "See Also" items, the convention is that terms should only go there if they are not mentioned in the article body. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 23:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Templates within text

This is now a massive article on an even more massive topic with lots of references at the end and lots of related pages in wikipedia. Whilst the references need to be there who is actually going to read them? Especially if you are a casual reader, anything below the beginning of the references is now visual junk so all those useful templates that people have spent hours creating are wallowing in a no-mans land and are not very useful. If you put them in the body of the text in the sections where they are relevant they don't print (certainly not using the new "book creator") but you can get a great overview of where to look to get around the topic. Also there are lots of stub pages for things that are covered in other pages and creating the template gives a way of looking over these and either pulling them back into a full article, or moving stuff out of a longer article onto the stub page, without repeating yourself too much. Can we try this for a bit rather than moving them back? I think it makes the article a more useful reference and remember WP:NOTPAPER so we can use little tricks like collapsible templates where they are useful. Arfgab (talk) 08:13, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the person who reverted you, and I appreciate that you had good reasons for what you did. The explanation, though, is fairly simple. According to WP:FOOTERS, these "navigation box" templates are always put at the bottom of a page, and not within the page, in order to have a uniform layout style across all Wikipedia articles. My impression as a reader is that, in general, it works pretty well to blue-link everything that ought to be linked, within the text where it comes up, and anyone who wants to follow-through to the linked term need only click on it to do so. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it might be worth re-opening the debate (if there ever was one) because some of these topics are just so complicated that it is impossible to put all the blue links you want in and still make it a readable and easy to understand passage. Also there are a lot of things that get blue-linked that are not directly related and my point was to try and draw the related topics together, to make it easier to write overviews of subjects because you know another article exists that covers the detail. I'll try the medicine portal because I think they might get what I mean and it may be that the existing templates aren't quite in the right format for what we need. Arfgab (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's possible the medicine portal may be able to help with how the specific templates are formatted, what they contain, but you would have to go to WP:MOS to get changes in how page lay-out is done. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Worms

A "worm" is not a valid biological entity; it is folk taxonomy, or at best an obsolete form taxon. There are profound differences between the nervous systems of different lineages of "worms" - as a comparison, we don't have a section termed "beast" (where we'd discuss the NS of terrestrial vertebrates) either. In fact, the difference between the CNS of an earthworm and that some flatworms is about as large as that between a human's and a starfish's (and they are about as closely related)! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't write the section in question, but I think you make a very good point. (Ah well, some of us are used to working in mammals.) Please feel free to go ahead and change it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The whole region of the article could need a restructure. You need RS, you need an editor familiar with worm literature (or actually, protostomians in general). I have little experience with worms (except the odd species, rarely), but WP:TOL should to be able to recruit someone up to the task. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:21, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I did write the most of the section in question, and while I fully admit to not being a specialist on "worms", it isn't clear to me specifically what the problem is. "Worm" is a paraphyletic grouping in the same way that "invertebrate" is; it seems to me that both terms are useful. If there are incorrect statements in the article they should certainly be fixed, but at the same time it is important to keep this article at a level accessible to a high school student who has had a biology class. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

"Worm" is not equivalent to "invertebrate": "invertebrate" refers to any animal that is not a member of Vertebrata and is merely a paraphyletic term, "worm" refers to any animal with a somewhat long, thin body. Writing about "the nervous system of worms" in general makes about as much sense as writing about the nervous system of snakes, caecilians, amphisbaenians, and anguids in general. Ucucha 17:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it is fully possible to discuss the nervous system of worms, as all animals that fall under this heading have rather generalized nervous systems. The section of the article discuss really discuss earthworms though, all this can easily be solved by renaming the section. Petter Bøckman (talk) 17:34, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

It also discusses C. elegans. Ucucha 17:41, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Let me explain what I was trying to do when I wrote that material. The basic point is that the first bilaterians are thought to have had a body plan consisting of a segmented tubular body with a central nerve cord (or twin cords) and a hollow gut. There are still many species, scattered across a range of phyla, that retain that primitive plan or something close to it. I don't know a better word to describe them than "worm". I think this is a reflection of a problem that crops up frequently in evolutionary biology: it is difficult to describe the relationship between species that share a similar body plan but whose ancestry diverged a long time ago. Among vertebrates, the hagfish and lamprey are a good example of this phenomenon. Looie496 (talk) 18:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The body plan cited by you for the ancestral bilaterian is only one of a number of scenarios. doi:10.1038/nature07309, for example, suggest that the through gut evolved repeatedly. Perhaps the problem is rather that we humans tend to think things that look similar to us actually are similar. I doubt nematodes, annelids, platyhelminths, nemerteans, and the many smaller phyla of "worms" are really that much more similar to each other than other animal phyla are. Besides, I don't see from your explanation why we would need separate sections on "Bilateria" and "worms". Ucucha 19:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that the way I did it is the only way, or even the best way, I'm just trying to explain why I did it that way. And I don't have any objection to anybody changing it, as long as the result isn't so obscure and technical that nobody short of a graduate student in neuroscience can make sense of it. The basic point is that bilaterians, as a group, share a substantial commonality in nervous system structure, and that commonality shows up more clearly in some ("worms") than in others. Looie496 (talk) 20:05, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

My two cents: The term "worms" can be useful in certain contexts, just as "marine mammals" and "algae". All three are polyphyletic groups that include members based on generalities of form or ecology. However, the section on "worms" in this article covers two distinct groups and seems to be discussing anatomy rather than form or ecology. So, it would be better to call the section "Annelids and nematodes" or perhaps "Roundworms and segmented worms" (which are the common names of those two groups). --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

How about this restructuring?

Protostomes usually have a double, ventral, solid, nerve chord.

Round worms

The nervous system of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has a fixed number of neurons which are organised into ganglia, most of wich are concentrated near the head around the pharynx. A double ventral nerve chord is present. The organisation is unsegmented in nature. The neuronal processes are simple in structure, lacking the branches seen in other organisms. The nervous system of C. elegans has been mapped out down to the synaptic level. Every neuron and its cellular lineage has been recorded and most, if not all, of the neural connections are known. In this species, the nervous system is sexually dimorphic; the nervous systems of the two sexes, males and hermaphrodites, have different numbers of neurons and groups of neurons that perform sex-specific functions. In C. elegans, males have exactly 383 neurons, while hermaphrodites have exactly 302 neurons.

Annelids

Earthworms have dual nerve cords running along the length of the body and merging at the tail and the mouth. These nerve cords (like the rest of the body) are segmented and are connected by transverse nerves like the rungs of a ladder at every segment. These transverse nerves help coordinate the two sides of the animal. Two ganglia at the head end function similar to a simple brain. Photoreceptors on the animal's eyespots provide sensory information on light and dark.

(I think that)The Comparative Anatomy and function needs to be expanded to give, well, a comparative over view of nervous systems and their evolution in different clades. What say you? Staticd (talk) 12:28, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

If you want to work on this, go for it. We should try to keep this top-level article accessible to undergraduates and advanced high school students (although it's okay to ask them to do some work to understand it), but that certainly leaves room for additions. We particularly ought to have some material on the relationship between genes and nervous system structure (an area that I don't understand in enough depth to write about it). If it gets too extensive, we can create an evolution of the nervous system article, to go along with evolution of the brain. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

References

Questionable Redirect

I recently searched "nerve" and was redirected to this page. I really think that I should have been redirected to the page for "neuron", since nerve and neuron are synonyms, at least as far I as understand it. I don't know how to fix this though, so perhaps if someone else agrees with me and would like to fix it, they can have at it. -John — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.254.174.66 (talk) 15:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised that "nerve" doesn't have its own article, but they're not synonyms. A neuron is a nerve cell, not a nerve; both are parts of the nervous system. Rivertorch (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I think nervous system is a better redirect than neuron, but I agree that the best thing would be to have a separate article. The problem is to find somebody to write one: my own expertise is on the CNS. Nerves get a lot more attention from neurologists than from neuroscientists, so ideally somebody with a medical background would take this on. Looie496 (talk) 17:15, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

In July last year Lova Falk suggested at Talk:Peripheral nerve moving Peripheral nerve to Nerve. That makes sense to me. Thoughts? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Support. That's a good solution. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:33, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It looks like that's actually the way it was set up prior to October 2010 -- not really sure why it was changed. In any case I think it would need an admin to do the move. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I've made the request. [1] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

An editor has contested the move at Talk:Peripheral_nerve#Move? If anybody feels like defending the move, be my guest. In the meantime does anybody object to me changing the redirect on Nerve from here to Peripheral nerve? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:06, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

[2] Nerve now redirects to Peripheral nerve. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:38, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The move was done by User:Jafeluv. [3] Peripheral nerve now redirects to Nerve. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

enildeah\tcejbus

The title is flipped — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.197.72 (talk) 01:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

science

hi, can you he;p me in science?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.210.75.179 (talk) 12:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The place where you can get help is Wikipedia:Help desk. I'm sure someone will help you there. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

nervous system models of function

I think it is important or useful to add more information or links about other models of brain function in the function section. For example nervous system network models.Gcastellanos (talk) 21:02, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Short and long scales

Hello all, great contributors to the Wikipedia project. I'm a Mexican architect and have found difficult to adapt to the use of short and long scale uses of multiples of 10. I understand that most English language countries use the short scale, so that a billion equals 10^9 and not 10^12, but wouldn't it be more universal to use scientific notation instead? An example "The size of the nervous system ranges from a few hundred cells in the simplest worms, to on the order of 100 billion cells in humans." Instead "The size of the nervous system ranges from a few hundred cells in the simplest worms, to on the order of 10^11 (or 10^14 whichever is right) cells in humans." I hope I'm not stating the obvious and a rule for this already exists in the Wikipedia editing book, but I'm guessing a lot of us not-users of the short scale have the same problem. Well, that's it, have a wonderful day and thank you for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EzequielCSantana (talk • contribs) 18:04, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would be more universal, and make the article easier to understand for some people, but it would also make the article harder to understand for other people. Even now the most common complaint about this article is that it is too technical. Looie496 (talk) 21:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

What Is The Nervous System Information? For 6th Graders?

I need to know because I can't understand the information in my class. Please Help, Please! http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Nervous_system&action=edit&section=new#

Signed, ♦A Seventh Grader♦ ∞Julie Carlson∞

I'm afraid this article can't be written at a sixth grade level and still work for its main audience. You should take a look at Neuroscience for Kids, a web site that is exactly aimed at elementary school students. Looie496 (talk) 18:07, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 January 2014

Please remove the "T" in "T===Neurons and synapses===", in the "Function" section, so that it now reads "===Neurons and synapses===". It currently shows "T===Neurons and synapses===" exactly as quoted, rather than the bold subtitle "Neurons and synapses". Thank you. 81.110.18.90 (talk) 18:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done - The requested change has been made. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:10, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 January 2014

Please correct the visceral to visceral Geotakhm (talk) 18:58, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Done, thanks! LittleMountain5 19:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 February 2014

I wnt to register myself

thanks 182.181.197.104 (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Click "log in" at the top RH corner of the screen, then click "join Wikipedia" and follow the instructions. Please note that this will not allow you to edit this page, or any other semi-protected page, until your account is autoconfirmed - after 4 days and 10 good edits. Arjayay (talk) 10:07, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 October 2014

I elive at the beginning of the artice where it talks about how the nervous sytem is part of an animals body, should be change to humans body. 108.193.136.37 (talk) 15:21, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

 Not done - all animals have a nervous system, and the article then discusses vertebrates, spmones, jellyfish, worms etc - humans are just one species of animal, - Arjayay (talk) 15:31, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

navbox craziness

The collection of navboxes at the bottom of this article may be the most extreme example of template creep I have ever seen. In addition to {{Animal anatomy}}, there are 10 navboxes nested in three meta-navboxes that exist only on this page. And each navbox has lots of subgroups, sub-subgroups and even sub-sub-subgroups. Who would hunt through this mess for related articles? Keeping in mind the guidelines for good navboxes, which are really needed on this page? RockMagnetist(talk) 18:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for drawing attention to that. I deleted two of the four templates. I left Biology and Medical Science, as being the two that are most relevant. I deleted Life Sciences, as really being far too broad for this page, and Animal anatomy, as not really adding anything beyond the two I retained. Of the remaining two, it's not clear to me which one we would delete if we were to delete one more, so I'm OK with keeping both of them. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Tryptofish. That's a good start, but there are really six templates left. I have made that more clear by taking them out of their wrappers. Of the six, my feeling is that only {{nervous system}} belongs here; the rest are more specialized. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm tempted to link to Medusa's head. Anyway, I just deleted most of them, but I kept the histology template along with the main nervous system one, because I think that both of them are relevant and useful here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:34, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Protection

Does this page still need to be protected? From what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.250.240.86 (talk) 00:39, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism. If you look at the log you can see that semi-protection needed to be applied over and over again, until finally an administrator got frustrated and semi-protected it indefinitely. (Semi-protection means that the page can only be edited by registered editors who have at least ten edits over a period of at least ten days. Basically almost any registered editor qualifies.) Looie496 (talk) 00:43, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

hi

Conflicting definitions.

There are different and conflicting divisions of the nervous system on Wikipedia. One divides the PNS into a sensory and motoric part, and then divides the motoric part into the ANS and somatic nervous system. The other division is simply of the PNS into the ANS and somatic nervous system, with the latter also including sensory (afferent) nerve fibres. I have changed this page to conform to the latter definition. Does anyone have any idea which definition is most prevalent? It's important that different articles on Wikipedia at least the same definition.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Juicy fisheye (talk • contribs) .

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion about the divisions of the nervous system. There aren't different definitions, just different ways of explaining them. Some textbooks have unnecessarily complex diagrams (or flow charts) that only serve to confuse the reader, while others contain what I like to think of as the "standard" diagram. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have any sort of diagram showing the overall setup, though it does have a slightly confusing table showing the basic information. This table is insufficient, since the different divisions have a specific set of connections that are not shown. I'll produce a flow chart and upload it as soon as possible. Fuzzform (talk) 19:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

---

I am not entirely convinced by the articles definition of the nervous system ("The nervous system is the part of an animal's body that coordinates its voluntary and involuntary actions and transmits signals to and from different parts of its body.")

This to me neglects the sensory functions of the nervous system (though I appreciate it reads actions rather than movements). Defining it purely as a signalling system would require distinction from others such as the endocrine system (which necessitates an anatomical component).

I would argue the best definition of the nervous system is "Neurons, glial cells and muscle". Possibly extended to "Neurons, glial cells and muscle which function to process information about the external and internal environments, generate movement and give rise to higher cognitive functions".

I'd be extremely interested to hear other peoples thoughts! ABGane (talk) 14:06, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

You have a point about sensory functions. Muscles are not considered part of the nervous system by any source I have ever seen, though. Looie496 (talk) 14:38, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2016

"The size of the nervous system ranges from a few hundred cells in the simplest worms, to around 100 billion cells in humans." Change the upper limit of the number of neurons to the currently discovered one: 267 billion in the African Elephant. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24971054 Lauroflorin (talk) 11:28, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Done as requested, thanks. Looie496 (talk) 16:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 March 2017

208.93.200.75 (talk) 00:49, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

hello it is part of body

 Not done Correct! — IVORK _Discuss 02:18, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 May 2017

Please change the first link in the article for "animal" to the actual page for animals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal). Currently it leads to a page about Eumetazoas, which is a separate sub-set of animals. I believe it would be better and easier to understand if the article that was linked to actually reflected the link itself. Many thanks! Semaj2203 (talk) 10:25, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

 Thanks! — IVORK _Discuss 02:44, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 11 September 2017

Hi i like editing plz let me edit im nice 137.59.252.135 (talk) 08:51, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone will add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 09:43, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Lack of citations at the whole bottom section

Somebody should really use citations and the studies referenced in the bottom section of Pathology. I've been trying to work on my source attributions and get better at wiki so will try to help later if I can. Still getting use to the editor and html subscripts — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raiders88 (talk • contribs) 22:02, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Animals

In the text, it states "multicellular animals" but all animals are multicellular. 209.93.103.154 (talk) 17:08, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 June 2020

My request is that the word “animal” be changed to “person.” Since the nervous system refers to a person and not an animal. There are even diagrams of persons not animals on this description. Thank you for your consideration. 47.233.59.212 (talk) 04:21, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: No, humans are not the only ones with a nervous system... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:36, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 October 2021

Edit request for the following section, found in the article introduction:

"However, this classical doctrine has been challenged in recent decades by discoveries about the existence and use of electrical signals in plants [2]. Based on these findings, some scientists have proposed the need to create a scientific field called plant neurobiology and the existence of a plant nervous system [3][4]. This proposal has led to a dispute in the scientific community between those who think we should talk about the nervous system of plants and those who are against it [5] [6]. The inflexibility of the positions in the scientific debate on both sides has led to propose a solution to the debate, which consists of redefining the concept of the nervous system using only physiological criteria and avoiding phylogenetic criteria [7]. "

This does not appear to be scientific consensus, and the rest of this article talks exclusively about the animal nervous system; plants are not mentioned again nor is there any relevant connection between a plant "nervous system" and that of animals. Even if plants do have some structures analogous to the animal nervous system, it would be its own separate field of study and therefore its own separate article, just as there are separate articles on wikipedia for vascular tissue in plants vs. circulatory system in animals. The section certainly does not belong in the article introduction. The section should be moved to another article such as Plant cognition or omitted entirely. The entire introduction to the article should be reverted to the version most recently to not include the quoted section (the version on 11 September 2021), since certain parts of the introduction were rewritten to squeeze the quoted section in.

2601:801:C100:2920:3D9F:BADA:4BBC:AE32 (talk) 23:12, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. This is clearly a controversial change... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:42, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Question moved from "Anatomy" section of article

what about chemical signaling?

Nerve signals

What are nerve cells? I you now please put it on the nervous system page as soon as possible.Please and thank you.

Nervous System

the nervous system is a part of your brain and makes your eyes see

Diagram showing the major divisions of the nervous system

The key in this diagram has many mistakes with regards to the color coding of structure versus function. The red and green labels need to be switched for many divisions.