The Anatomy of the Neuron

Up ahead a red shape glows in the darkness. More intricate than a snowflake and just as delicate, the neuron's beauty almost takes your breath away.

Mindstein begins in a reverent voice: “The neuron, which is sometimes called the building block of the nervous system, is actually just a modified cell in your body. As you can see, the typical neuron has a cell body, or soma, that contains a nucleus, like most other cells. The soma is a bustling biochemical factory that synthesizes proteins, breaks sugars down to provide energy to the cell, and so on.

“What makes a neuron different from other cells is the large set of processes that branch away from the cell body. These delicate filaments allow the neuron to gather information from other neurons and to transmit that information over great distances to remote places.”