Chapter 2 in Psychology

Alright, now it's the second blog and of course I still can't decide what I'm going to blog about, so I'll just do what I did last week and be boring/talk about what I'm learning this week in Psychology. This week the chapter we're reading is titled "The Biological Perspective" which basically means you're going to be forcing yourself to read all of this unless you genuinely like Biology. Anyways, the chapter starts off by talking about the Nervous System and its components. The Nervous System can be summarized as a large network of specialized cells that carry information to everywhere in the body. This system is made up of two smaller systems called the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems. The Central Nervous System's main components are the brain and the spinal cord. The brain deals with information and sending orders to the body and the spinal cord is a pathway for the brain. The Peripheral System, overall, is also a pathway but it is a pathway to and from the Central Nervous System. Overall, The Peripheral System does everything that the brain and spinal cord don't do. Such as: regulating the body, helping with skeletal muscle movement, maintaining body functions, saving energy, dealing with stress, and others. Here is a simple diagram that more simply describes both systems.  
The second concept in this chapter is the structure of a neuron. A neuron is the specialized cell in the nervous system that deals with messaging. Since neurons are messengers, their structure, like any specialized cell, is unique and designed for what neurons do. The part of a neuron that receives messages is called a dendrite. Numerous dendrites are attached to the soma (or cell body) which contains the nucleus and can be considered the center of a neuron because the soma is what keeps the cell alive and functioning. The axon is another fiber attached to the soma and instead of receiving messages like dendrites, axons send messages away. The axon is well covered by fatty substances called myelin. The purpose of myelin is to increase the speed of electrical impulses (messages) by having them jump from node to node (gaps in the myelin). The myelin also protects the axon as well as its electrical impulses (messages) the same way a plastic coating stops wires (such as a copper computer or telephone wire) from interfering from each other; it is an insulator. Below is a diagram that shows the structure of a neuron.