• Question: How do neurons in the brain communicate with each other?

    Asked by harrya37 to Kimberley, Amy, Drew, Julia, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by isaac, caitlink0406, hwaghorne.
    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey Harry & Caitlin… I believe it works by sending chemical information between the conections. I;m sure Kimberly can elaborate further..One nerve releases a chemical and the other nerve detects this and releases the chemical form the other end… a chain reaction so to speak..

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey Isaac, Caitlin and Harry!

      Kimberley is probably the best person to answer you on this because it’s what she works on! Neurons conduct electrical impulses and thus cause signal transfer in the brain. How they do this involves movement of charged ions across their cell membrane – for more details check out this; http://www.bris.ac.uk/synaptic/basics/basics-2.html

      🙂

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hello,

      Julia is right, neurons are my speciality 🙂 We have billions of neurons in our brain and in order to communicate with each other they send each other chemical messages called neurotransmitters some neurotransmitters that you might of heard of are dopamine and serotonin.

      This happens in specific parts of the neuron called synapses, which is the junction where two neurons meet. It is important that the neurons send the right amount of chemical message so it is tightly regulated and I am trying to understand how they manage to do that.

      Hope that answers your question 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Wow! Kimberley’s work on this sounds really cool! I’ll leave this one to the expert then – sounds like she pretty much covered it =D

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