Understanding How We Understand - Basics of Brain Function

The basic unit of the nervous system is the neuron or nerve cell. It has a cell body that houses the nucleus where the DNA is stored, and projections called dendrites and axons. Generally, neurons have only one axon (although it may have many branches at the end) that carries impulses away from the cell body and many dendrites that carry impulses to the cell body.

Imagine that you are the neuron with a special job to do and the dendrites are your ears and the axon is your mouth. Your job is to scream "Go!" when enough of the cells around you say it's OK. So, its like you are on a game show and the audience is all calling out to you telling you what to do. All around you are other cells screaming in your ears. Some of them are telling you to be quiet and some are telling you to scream. In neurological terms, the cells telling you to be quiet are inhibitory because they inhibit your decision to scream. The ones telling you to go ahead and let 'er rip are excitatory. You are listening with your dendrites to all this input from all these other cells and when enough of them are saying scream you decide it's time to let it all out. At this point the neurologist would say you have reached your potential and there is only one thing you can do so you scream "Go!" with all you've got.

Now, you are just one link in a network of neurons and when you scream "Go!" other neurons on their own game shows are listening to you and making their decisions about when they have reached their potential and fire their axons to other cells and so on.

It looks like a jumbled mess but this is a network of neurons. The cells are connected and interconnected to hundreds or thousands of other cells. They are all telling each other to fire (excitatory) or not fire (inhibitory). It is the sum of all this input that causes specific sequences of neurons to fire in what we call a neural pathway. These pathways end up being thoughts or actions depending on what cells are involved.

When you see the sun, the light falls on the retina in your eye and a retinal cell says "Go!" to a cell in the optic nerve and it says "Go!" to a nerve in the thalamus in the brain and that cell says "Go!" to a nerve in the visual center at the back of the brain. In this way, with thousands of cells firing in sequence, we begin to get a picture of our world. It is terribly complex and there is so much information coming in at all times from all the senses it is absolutely amazing that we can put it all together.

When we say "sensory integration" we are talking about the orderly interpretation of all the information we are getting from both inside and outside our bodies. In order to do this we have to have healthy neurons that are doing their part in the pathways that make sense of it all. For neurons to be healthy they have to have input (be it excititory or inhibitory) from lots of other cells. When they get input it turns on their DNA to build more nerve cell just like exercise tells muscle cells to get bigger and stronger.

For various reasons sometimes neurons break down and stop doing their jobs efficiently. This effects other neurons in their pathways and we start to see breakdowns in the way the nervous system operates. By looking at specific clues from behavior or movement, to over or under sensitivity to sound or light among other things, we can figure out what pathways are failing and give special input to those pathways to help build them up again.

Dr. Martin Rukeyser DC, is a Chiropractor who lives and practices in Port Saint Lucie, FL. He maintains a solo chiropractic office called Life Chiropractic http://www.lifechiropracticpsl.com and is also one of the co-founders of the Brain Training Center of the Treasure Coast http://www.flbraintraining.com - a practice dedicated to improving the lives of children and adults with Autism, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Aspergers, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Marty has long held a personal and professional interest in brain function and development and the connection between a healthy body and brain.

Dr. Rukeyser graduated Magna Cum Laude from Life University Chiropractic College in 1998. Prior to coming to Florida, he directed two clinics in a medically under-served community in in rural Mississippi. Dr. Marty, was raised in Long Island, NY and met his wife Ashley while in Mississippi. They have two sons, Ben and Jonah.

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