How is it that we can wake up each morning and stretch ourselves out from a night of laying down straight asleep in bed? It’s because we have this amazing chord running right from our brain. Looking at a spinal cord diagram closely one can already begin to understand that there is a direct relationship between the brain and the chord, and it is what hold the body up straight. This chord interestingly, is made up of nervous tissue and cells, no wonder any small damage leaves the body writhing in pain.
Severe trauma can cause massive damage to the spinal cord, leaving it unable to function as well as it is supposed to. This is what causes paralysis in most people. Because these nerves which are connected to the brain get damaged, then the effect can result in an inability to sit up straight or to use other limbs of the body for movement. This leads to the use of a wheel chair to be able to get around. The nerves get affected to the point where one may lose all sensation in part of their body.
The spinal cord diagram is studied by numerous trauma surgeons across the world who constantly try to save patients from paralysis, though sometimes it is unavoidable. The cord functions mostly through the transmission of neuron signals between the brain and the rest of the body. This is why we are able to have functioning limbs to pick noses, eat and protect ourselves. There is a bony column which actually protects the spinal cord from any trauma and fights disease too. The cord itself has its own neural circuits that control its own reflex movements of the body and generates certain patterns within each human being.
It is therefore important to understand how the spine works and this is why one must visually see it with the spinal cord diagram. There are various functions that the spine performs in order to keep the human body in proper working order. Firstly it allows for motor information to travel right down the spine to the other parts of the body. Secondly it provides sensory information which travels up to the brain, and the respective action is then performed. A good example is when the body feels a need to itch a certain area, this goes to the brain which then reacts by allowing the hand to move right to where it is needed, giving the fingers the sensory ability to scratch the itch up and down. Thirdly, the spine is able to coordinate all the reflexes of the body, controlling all the limbs that the body uses.
Thus the spinal cord is a pathway for information from the brain to other parts of the body and vice versa. Given all these facts, it is shocking to state that the diameter of the spinal cord is about the diameter of a human finger, something which doesn’t look that small in any diagrams you may come across.