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On September 17th, 1998 the Ithaca Journal ran its first "Ask A Scientist!" article in which Professor Neil Ashcroft , who was then the director of CCMR, answered the question "What is Jupiter made of?" Since then, we have received over 1,000 questions from students and adults from all over the world. Select questions are answered weekly and published in the Ithaca Journal and on our web site. "Ask A Scientist!" reaches more than 21,000 Central New York residents through the Ithaca Journal and countless others around the world throught the "Ask a Scientist!" web site.

Across disciplines and across the state, from Nobel Prize winning scientist David Lee to notable science education advocate Bill Nye, researchers and scientists have been called on to respond to these questions. For more than seven years, kids - and a few adults - have been submitting their queries to find out the answer to life's everyday questions.

Previous Week's Question Published: 29 May, 2003 Next Week's Question
To get cake in your mouth, the brain must send a message
Question
How does your body move? Does the brain send it messages?

Question
Muscles move on commands from the brain. Single nerve cells in the spinal cord, called motor neurons, are the only way the brain connects to muscles. When a motor neuron inside the spinal cord fires, an impulse goes out from it to the muscles on a long, very thin extension of that single cell called an axon. When the impulse travels down the axon to the muscle, a chemical is released at its ending. Muscles are made of long fibers connected to each other longways by a ratchet mechanism, the kind of mechanism that allows the two parts of an extension ladder to slide past each other and then lock in a certain position. When the chemical impulse from the motor neuron hits the muscle, it causes to muscle fibers to rachet past each other, overlapping each other more, so that the muscle gets shorter and fatter. When the impulses from the nerves stop, the muscle fibers slide back to their original positions.

Each motor neuron connects to just one muscle, say the bicep on the front of your upper arm that lifts your forearm, or to the triceps, the one on the back that extends your forearm. But when you move, you never think, "I'd like to contract my bicep two inches and relax my tricep two inches" -- instead you think, "I'd like to put this cake in my mouth!" How does the brain translate from the general idea to lift something to your mouth to specific commands to muscles? It does it in stages. In the cerebral cortex, the commands in the neurons there represent coordinated movements - like pick up the cake, hit the ball, salute. The cortex then connects to a sort of console in the spinal cord that overlays the motor neurons. This console lays out arm position in space, up-down, left-right. Each desired arm position then is read out as a collection of specific commands to each motor neuron and muscle.

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