Your brain sends communicative signals through neurons. "The human brain is made up of billions and billions of neurons sending signals to one another in a form of electrical impulses. The sums of their communications combine to form our intellect, feelings, consciousness and thoughts". Highly specialized, neurons are constantly sending signals to one another in a form of chemical impulses to electrical signals and back again. The body and brain respond and adjust to changes or stimuli in the environment. These stimuli, physical or emotional set off impulses. Every time you feel something to include the effects of neurons "firing" to and from one another, messages are passed to connected neurons in the form of chemicals called neurotransmitters. Neurons consist of a cell body, dendrites and axons. While dendrites have many extensions, each neuron has only one axon. Dendrites pass along messages towards the cell body, while the axons sends messages away from the cell body.
However, dendrites and axons are not directly connected to each other. In order to keep from decaying or getting lost, axons are insolated and protected by specialized cells called "Schwann cells", which are covered with myelin. This fatty substance forms around well-used axons and not only speeds up electrical transmissions, (Twelve times as fast), but reduces interference from other nearby reactions. Some axons have gaps between Schwann cells called "nodes of Ranvier". They serve as points along the axon to accelerate messages by leaping from node to node called action potential, traveling hundreds of times faster than messages traveling along the surface of the axon. This action is called "Saltatory conduction". Between dendrites and axons there is a gap called the "synaptic gap". Here is where messages are carried inside a neuron by electrical impulses and then is it transmitted across the synaptic gap from one neuron to another by chemicals stored in the ends of the axons called neurotransmitters.
When the cell body sends an electrical discharge outward, it stimulates the release of stored neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap. Once in the gap, chemical reactions prompt new electrical energy in the receptors to other dendrites. Eventually, this repeated stimulation excites nearby cells, in time the neuron's ability to get excited is developed. Neurons have the ability to excite or inhibit signals from being forwarded. By constructing an environment that can prompt synaptic connections, learning is facilitated. The key to getting smarter is growing more synaptic connections between brain cells and not losing existing connections. It's the connections that allow us to solve problems and figure things out.
