Peripheral Nervous System: Crash Course A&P #12

When it comes to the nervous system, or just
your body in general, let’s face it:

your brain gets all the props.

And it deserves those props! It’s a complicated,
and crucial, and sometimes crazy boss of an organ.

But your brain would be pretty useless without
a support team that kept it

connected to the outside world.

Because frankly, like any leader, the more
isolated your brain gets, the weirder it gets.

Put a person in a watery, pitch-black sensory
deprivation tank, and you’ll see the brain

do some really weird stuff. Without a constant
flood of external information, the brain starts

to confuse its own thoughts for actual experiences,
leading you to hallucinate the taste of cheeseburgers,

or the sound of a choir singing, or the sight
of pink stampeding elephants.

It’s your peripheral nervous system that
keeps things real, by putting your brain in

touch with the physical environment around you,
and allowing it to respond. This network snakes

through just about every part of your body,
providing the central nervous system with

information ranging from the temperature, to the touch
of a hand on your shoulder, to a twisted ankle.

The peripheral nervous system’s sensory
nerve receptors spy on the world for the central

nervous system, and each type responds to
different kinds of stimuli.

Thermoreceptors respond to changes in temperature.
photoreceptors react to light, chemoreceptors

pay attention to chemicals, and mechanoreceptors
respond to pressure, touch, and vibration.

And then we’ve got specialized nerve receptors
called nociceptors that, unlike those other

receptors, fire only to indicate pain, which
is the main thing I want to talk about today.

Because, as unpleasant as a stick in the eye
or tack in the foot may be, pain is actually

a great example of where everything we’ve talked
about over the last few weeks all comes together,

as we trace a pain signal through your nervous
system, from the first cuss to the Hello Kitty band aid.

By the end of this episode of Crash Course
Anatomy & Physiology you’ll never think

of a stubbed toe, pounding headache, or burned
tongue the same way again.

Most people go to great lengths to avoid pain,
but really, it’s an incredibly useful sensation,

because it helps protect us from ourselves,
and from the outside world.

If you’re feeling physical pain, it probably
means that your body is under stress, damaged,

or in danger, and your nervous system is sending
a cease and desist signal to stop twisting

your arm like that, or to back away from that bonfire,
or please seek medical attention, like, RIGHT NOW.

So in that way, pain is actually good for
you -- that’s why it exists. I’m not saying

it’s pleasant, but if you’ve ever wished
for an X-Men-like power to be impervious to

pain, I’ve gotta say, that is one foolish
monkey’s paw of a wish.

Just ask Ashlyn Blocker. She’s got a genetic
mutation that’s given her a total insensitivity

to any kind of pain. And as a result, she’s
absent-mindedly dunked her hands in pots of

boiling water, run around for days without noticing
broken bones, and nearly chewed off her own tongue.

Luckily, such congenital conditions are very
rare. The rest of us have a whole nervous

system dedicated to making sure our bodies react with
a predictable chain of events at the first sign of damage.

Like say you just wake up and you’re extraordinarily
hungry for some reason, so you run downstairs

to grab some clam chowder, but you didn’t put
any shoes on and suddenly you’re like, “YOWW!”

There’s a tack, fell out of the wall, and
you stepped right on it -- of course.

Your foot immediately lifts off the ground,
and then you’re assuring your dog that you’re

not yelling at her, you’re just yelling,
and then you limp over to the couch, and sit

down, and you pull up your foot, and remove
that spiny devil from your flesh.

You want to talk physiology? So what exactly
just happened in your body?

Well, the first step was a change in your
environment -- that is, a stimulus that activated

some of your sensory receptors.

In this case, it was a change from the probably
completely ignored feeling of bare skin on

a smooth floor to a distinct feeling of discomfort
-- the sharp metal tack piercing your skin.

Your peripheral nervous system’s mechano-
and nociceptors provided that base sensation,

or awareness that something had changed.

Then it went to your central nervous system
-- first to the spinal cord that caused the

immediate reflexive action of pulling up your foot,
and then your brain eventually interpreted that

awareness into the perception of pain, and decided to
pull the tack out and probably say an expletive or two.

Pain itself is a pretty subjective feeling, but the
fact is, we all have the same pain threshold.

That is, the point where a stimulus is intense
enough to trigger action potentials in those

nociceptors is the same for everybody. But, you and
I might have different tolerances for discomfort.

In general, most doctors think of pain as the perception
of pain -- whatever any given brain says pain is.

So, you’ve got the stimulating event -- foot
meets tack -- and then the reception of that

signal, as the nociceptors in your foot sense
that stimulus, and then the transmission of

that signal through your nerves to your spinal
cord and eventually up to the brain.

Now remember back how every neuron in your body
has a membrane that keeps positive and negative

charges separated across its boundaries, like a battery
sitting around waiting for something to happen?

Well that tack in your flesh is that something.
And it snaps those nociceptors to attention.

Some neurons have mechanically-gated receptors
that respond to a stretch in their membranes

-- in this case, that happens when the tack
punches through them.

Meanwhile, other neurons have ligand-gated
receptors that open when the damaged skin

tissue releases chemicals like histamine or
potassium ions.

These channels allow sodium ions to flood
into the neuron, causing a graded potential,

if that hits the right threshold, it activates
the electrical event that sends the signal

all the way up the axon and gets one neuron
talking to another -- the action potential.

When that action potential races down the
length of its axon to the terminal, the message

hits the synapse that then flings it over that synaptic
gap to another neuron that’s in your spinal cord.

Remember, signals travel between neurons either
by electrical or chemical synapses.

The electrical ones send an electrical impulse,
while the chemical ones -- the ones I’m

talking about now -- first convert that signal
from electrical to chemical, by activating

neurotransmitters to bridge the synaptic gap,
before the receiving neuron converts that

chemical signal back into an electrical one.

In this case, news of the tack-attack is carried
by specific neurotransmitters whose sole job

is to pass along pain messages.

Now, so far, your body’s response to the
stimulus has been handled by the sensory,

or afferent, division of your peripheral nervous
system. This is the part that’s involved

expressly in collecting data and sending it
to the central nervous system.

But at this point, the responsibility changes
hands. The torch is passed.

Because the pain signal has just triggered
an action potential in a neuron in the spinal

cord, which is part of the central nervous system,
and there it reaches an integration center.

From here, the response is taken over by the
motor, or efferent division.

Once the integration center interprets the
signal, it transmits the message to motor

neurons, which send an action potential back
down your leg, where it reaches an effector.

And an effector is just any structure that
receives and reacts to a motor neuron’s

signal, like a muscle contracting or a gland
secreting a hormone.

From here, the motor neurons complete the
whole foot-lifting response until the rest

of your nervous system gets engaged in the
complicated tasks of figuring out what the

problem is, and fixing it.

Those are the five steps that your highly
specific neural pathways go through to produce

what’s known as a reflex arc.

A lot of your body’s control systems boil
down to reflexes just like this -- immediate

reactions that can either be innate or learned, but
don’t need much conscious processing in the brain.

Lifting your foot when you step on a tack
is an innate, or intrinsic, reflex action

-- a super fast motor response to a startling
stimulus.

These reflexes are so invested in your self-preservation
that you actually can’t think about them

before you respond.

All this processing happens in the spinal
cord, so that the control of muscles can be

initiated before the pain is actually perceived
by the brain.

Learned, or acquired reflexes on the other
hand, come from experience. Like how you learn

to dodge obstacles while riding a bike or
driving a car. That process is also largely

automatic, but you learn those reflexes by spending
time behind the wheel, or behind the handlebars.

And reflex arcs stimulate some muscles, while
inhibiting others. For example, the tack in

your right foot ended up activating the motor
neurons in your right hip flexors and hamstring,

causing that knee to bend and your foot to
lift up.

But it also told the quad muscles in your
left leg to extend and stand tall, allowing

you to shift your body’s weight off the
tack.

Of course not all reflexes come from pain,
as you’ve probably experienced when a doctor

tapped your knee and your foot kicked.

Your muscles and tendons are very sensitive
to being stretched too far, or too fast, because

that kind of movement can cause injury.

So for this we have receptors called muscle
and tendon spindles that specifically sense

stretching. If triggered by an over-stretch,
they generate a reflex arc that contracts

the muscle to keep it from stretching further.

So, when does the brain actually get involved
in all this?

Well, when your spinal cord sent impulses
down the motor neurons, it also sent signals

up your spinal cord toward the brain.

News of the tack arrived first at your thalamus,
the information switchboard that then split

the message and sent it to the somatosensory
cortex -- which identifies and localizes the

pain, like: “sharp, and foot”; as well
as the limbic system, which registers emotional

suffering -- like, “why tack? Why me?!”
And it also went to the frontal cortex, which

made sense of it all, assigning meaning to
the pain -- like, “oh, I see this tack fell

from the Crash Course poster on the wall here.”

So basically, although your body has been
reacting all along, it’s not until those

pain signals hit the brain that you have the
conscious thoughts of both “dang, that hurt,”

and “oh, that hurt because I stepped on
a specific pointy thing.“

And this is where I want to point out that
we here at Crash Course cannot be held responsible

for any injuries sustained in the process
of owning a Crash Course poster. Enjoy them

at your own risk.

Today you got your first look at the peripheral
nervous system, by learning how the afferent

and efferent divisions provide information
about, and responses to, pain. You learned

about the five steps of the reflex arc, the
different kinds of reflexes you have, and

what your brain has to say about all that
pain, once the news is finally broken to it.

Crash Course is now on Patreon! Big thanks
to all of our supporters on Patreon who make

Crash Course possible for themselves and for
the whole rest of the world through their

monthly contributions. If you like Crash Course
and you want to help us keep making great

new videos like this one, you can check out
Patreon.com/CrashCourse

This episode was written by Kathleen Yale.
The script was edited by Blake de Pastino,

and our consultant, is Dr. Brandon Jackson.
It was directed by Nicholas Jenkins, edited

by Nicole Sweeney, and our graphics team is
Thought Café.