How does the brain tell the body how and when to move

Question: How does the brain tell the body how and when to move
- Keywords:
  body,
  brain
Asked by anon-284279 on 5 Mar 2021.
- Lizzie Pendlington answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  The brain is connected to your body in a clever network called the Nervous System, it works a bit like an electrical circuit in a house or a computer. There are a few layers to the Nervous System but it is basically made up of special cells called neurons. The brain sends a message down a series of neurons to the muscle it wants to move. The muscle receives the message then tightens your muscle to move a leg or arm or other body part!
- Jonathan Willis answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  Well I’m no neurologist but I’ll try and answer this, always like a challenge. There’s two routes your brain can take, there’s an autonomic response a bit like when you burn your finger you quickly draw it away from the source of pain usually before you’ve even thought about it or there is your somatic nervous system which is your conscious act of doing/saying something. The autonomic part is sort of like your fight or flight response and you largely don’t have much control over that. So if we look at the burnt finger you quickly draw it away from the pain source but you then consciously look at it and then decide to run it under the cold tap which is your somatic system doing something. There’s a lot more involved to it than just that but that’s kind of the nuts and bolts of it.
- Karen Burstow answered on 6 Mar 2021:
  
  The brain and the body are connected by your nervous system. This is a very clever and complex system which sends messages to your organs and body parts using chemical and electrical signals. Some of these signals are constantly sent without you even thinking about it (the autonomic nervous system)! This keeps your body doing important functions like breathing, digesting and your heart beating. To move your body, different parts of your brain send messages to your different muscles, telling them to contract or relax. And this lets your body move in the way you want!
- Claire Price answered on 6 Mar 2021:
  
  The brain is your computer. It is the centre of your nervous system which acts like a network. It sends messages to throughout the body to tell the body what to do to move – like run or kick a football.
- Felicity Hunter answered on 8 Mar 2021: last edited 8 Mar 2021 11:26 am
  
  Since you already got lots of good explanations from other scientists, I thought I’d just leave some pretty cool facts here about brains and movement. Like the others explained, there are cells in your brain called ‘neurons’ that tell the other neurons in your body what to do. These neurons send more messages around your body than all of the mobile phones in the entire world! They usually send these messages at a super fast speed of more than 150 miles per hour as part of the somatic nervous system that Jonathan explained above. But if you touch something hot and you need to act quickly via the autonomic nervous system, motor neurons in your muscles can send information to your brain neurons at more than 200 miles per hour! Thats pretty fast!

Question: How does the brain tell the body how and when to move

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