(neuron. /nur·aan/)
by Sy’Keria Garrison
What does it mean?
Neurons are the basic building block of the brain and the nervous system. They receive sensory information from the outside world, send movement instructions to our muscles, and process and pass along electrical signals at every stage in between.
How do I use it in a sentence?
The students were researching how the neuron sends signals from the brain to the rest of the body, allowing us to think, feel, and move.
Figure 1: A diagram of the structure of a neuron. A neuron is derived of various different parts that allow for an action potential, the electrical current, to be moved from the dendrites to the axon terminal. There are four different stages of an action potential: stimulus, depolarization, repolarization, and hyperpolarization. Stimulus occurs at the dendrites as the cell receives input from other cells, while depolarization, repolarization, and hyperpolarization occur on the axon membranes. The stimulus is the point where the cell is excited and it comes from input from other cells. Depolarization happens when sodium ions enter the cell making the inside of the cell more positive. Repolarization occurs when potassium ions leave the cell and the cell is returning to resting state. Hyperpolarization occurs when the potassium ions continue to leave the cell making the inside more negative than the resting state. After the axon potential reaches the axon terminal signals can be passed to the next cell allowing for this neuron to communicate to other cells.
The term “neuron” was first used in 1883 by Benjamin Thompson Lowne in his paper entitled “On the structure and functions of the eyes of arthropoda.” Here he used the term to describe the neural part of eye of arthropods. In 1884, Burt Green Wilder used the term to describe the neuraxis, the main line of your nervous system that includes your brain and spinal cord. The first time the term neuron was used to describe a nerve cell was in 1891 by Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer.
Misconceptions (about word usage)
One misconception about neurons is that all cells in the brain are neurons. There are also glial cells in the brain with there actually being more glial cells in the brain than neurons!
Fields of study in which this word is commonly used:
Neuroscience
Psychology
Biology
Medicine
Physiology
