The Spinal Cord And The Spinal Nerves

The concepts that I learned from studying the spinal cord and the spinal nerves was that the spinal cords main function was to process the communication between the brain and the peripheral nervous system and that the spinal cord brings together the information entering the brain with the reflex responses.

Both the spinal cord and the spinal nerves are housed in two separate nervous systems, the spinal cord is housed in the central nervous system and the spinal nerves is housed in the peripheral nervous system, meaning that the two systems must work together to provide communication between the brain and the body as a whole. My interpretation of this is that if one of the nervous systems' of the body stops working it will negatively impact the function of the other nervous system. For example if the central nervous system suffers damage from an injury, it will cause damage to the peripheral nervous system because the injury to the central nervous system will cause damage to the spinal cord nerves.

The difficult concept of the spinal cord for me was understanding how the spinal cord  was able to produce a response through the reflex mechanisms. I was able to grasp the concept of the spinal cord producing a response by understanding that the nervous system functioned under the control of a reflex arc( the basic functional unit of the nervous system) The reflex arc receives stimuli and therefore produces a response through reflex mechanisms (Seely's Anatomy And Physiology 9th Edition, Page 411).


The spinal cord contains four types of nerves, the cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral nerves. In understanding the spinal nerves, I related my interpretation of the spinal nerves to that of a paraplegic. When an individual becomes paralyzed from an accident or a medical misphap, damage occurs to either the cervical nerves, the thoracic nerves, the lumbar nerves or the sacral nerves.  If damage occurs to the cervical nerves a paraplegic will suffer nerve damage to their upper limbs, such as paralysis from the neck down to the waist. If damage occurs to the thoracic nerves the paraplegic will not be able to breathe or their own and if damage occurs to the lumbar nerves the paraplegic will suffer paralysis from their waist down, however if damage occurs to the entire spinal column, damaging every nerve the result would cause paralysis to the entire body resulting in a quadraparaplegic.

The significance of the spinal cord and the spinal nerves is that togther both work in conjunction  with each other. Without the use of or damage to the spinal nerves, the spinal cord will be permanently damged and therefore cause certain parts of the body to stop functioning all together.

The questions that I have created this week that helped me think more clearly about the concepts and really learn them were:
What would happen to the spinal cord if one of the 31 spinal nerves were damaged? 
How would damage to one or more of the spinal cord nerves affect the peripheral nervous system? Would the spinal cord be able to provide its full function if one of the three vertebral nerves were damaged? (Such as if the cervical veterbrae nerves were damaged, could the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae nerves still carry out their functions within the body.)