page_title: Central nervous system
section_title: Spinal cord
hierarchical_section_title: Central nervous system / Structure / Spinal cord
caption_attribution_description: English: An anatomical illustration from the 1908 edition of Sobotta's Anatomy Atlas
context_page_description: The central nervous system is the part of the nervous system consisting primarily of the brain and spinal cord. The CNS is so named because it integrates the received information and coordinates and influences the activity of all parts of the bodies of bilaterally symmetric animals—i.e., all multicellular animals except sponges and radially symmetric animals such as jellyfish—and it contains the majority of the nervous system. The CNS also includes the retina and the optic nerve, as well as the olfactory nerves and olfactory epithelium as parts of the CNS, synapsing directly on brain tissue without intermediate ganglia. As such, the olfactory epithelium is the only central nervous tissue in direct contact with the environment, which opens up for therapeutic treatments.
  The CNS is contained within the dorsal body cavity, with the brain housed in the cranial cavity and the spinal cord in the spinal canal. In vertebrates, the brain is protected by the skull, while the spinal cord is protected by the vertebrae. The brain and spinal cord are both enclosed in the meninges.
context_section_description: From and to the spinal cord are projections of the peripheral nervous system in the form of spinal nerves (sometimes segmental nerves). The nerves connect the spinal cord to skin, joints, muscles etc. and allow for the transmission of efferent motor as well as afferent sensory signals and stimuli. This allows for voluntary and involuntary motions of muscles, as well as the perception of senses.
  All in all 31 spinal nerves project from the brain stem, some forming plexa as they branch out, such as the brachial plexa, sacral plexa etc. Each spinal nerve will carry both sensory and motor signals, but the nerves synapse at different regions of the spinal cord, either from the periphery to sensory relay neurons that relay the information to the CNS or from the CNS to motor neurons, which relay the information out.
  The spinal cord relays information up to the brain through spinal tracts through the "final common pathway" to the thalamus and ultimately to the cortex.
caption: Diagram of the columns and of the course of the fibers in the spinal cord. Sensory synapses occur in the dorsal spinal cord (above in this image), and motor nerves leave through the ventral (as well as lateral) horns of the spinal cord as seen below in the image.
exif: {}