Educator

Nervous Systems and Sensation

• One of the distinguishing characteristics of animals is their ability to react quickly to changes in their environment. For example, most animals are capable of moving when they sense food or danger.

• Animals depend on their nervous system to integrate the information they gather with their senses, and to send signals quickly to the parts of the body that must respond.

• In this Lesson, we’ll get an overview of the structure and function of animal nervous systems. We’ll examine the division of labor between central and peripheral nervous systems that’s typical of vertebrates.

• And we’ll see how the cells responsible for detecting sensory information send signals to the rest of the nervous system.