Their specific function is to allow our brains to learn, reason, and remember. Through the activity of neurons, the body responds and adjusts to changes in the environment. Those messages consist of chemicals and electrical impulses. Each neuron may have thousands of branches that connect it to other neurons. The branches are called dendrites or axons .
Axons extend for as long as four feet in humans.
In some animals, axons are even longer. At first, we thought that axons and dendrites simply ran through the body continuously, like wires. Then we discovered a space between each axon and dendrite. We call this space a synaptic gap , or synapse . The synapse is the space between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of the next neuron in a nerve pathway.