Everybody's talking about it. "It" being the nervous system and in particular those neurons involved with the production of dopamine. So let's start with a beginner's look at the neuron pictured here on the right. A neuron sends and receives messages to/from the brain.
1. light purple on the left of the cell represents dendrites which, through some kind of magic, pick up messages from other neurons. The figure to the left shows neurons in action, the space between the neurons is called a synapse. Chemicals called neurotransmitters allow the message to jump the synapse and pass it on to the next neuron.2. The long light blue fiber (you can barely see it in the diagram to the right) is called an axon and it carries the message away from the cell to the axon terminal (light purple the end of the axon) where the message passes through the synapse to the next neuron. The dark blue bulges along the axon make up the myelin sheath, the purposes of which is to speed up the message along the axon.
3. In our case, the neurotransmitter that allows the passage of the message through the synapse is dopamine.
4. In our case, dopamine-producing cells begin to die off and less dopamine is produced and our movements are affected by this lack of dopamine.
So, that's the Cole's Notes version of the working of a neuron. If I have made mistakes or left out some important point, forgive me. "Damn it Jim, I am a blogger, not a neurosurgeon. "
Easy right? Now you know what I know and it doesn't take a genius; although, as Einstein once said:
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability
to climb a tree, It will live its whole life believing
that it is stupid.
Well, you ain't no fish and nobody's asking you to climb a tree. The trouble is, the system is a lot more complicated than I have outlined, and I am half way up that damn tree.
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