RT Book, Section A1 Berkowitz, Aaron L. SR Print(0) ID 1174547159 T1 Overview of the Anatomy of the Nervous System T2 Clinical Neurology and Neuroanatomy: A Localization-Based Approach YR 2016 FD 2016 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781259834400 LK neurology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1174547159 RD 2024/03/28 AB The nervous system serves three main functions: perception, cognition, and action. Perception is the translation of the outer world into electrochemical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. For example, light information is converted by the retina and then sent to the brain by the optic nerves (cranial nerve 2); sound is transformed by the inner ear apparatus and transmitted to the brain via the auditory nerves (cranial nerve 8). Action is the brain’s way of allowing the organism to interact with the environment by moving the body (and in the case of humans and some other animals, by using movements of the vocal apparatus to communicate). Cognition includes all of the operations that interpret perceptual input to understand the external environment, and plan the interaction with the environment through action.