What are the spinal pathways?

There are three types of ascending tracts, dorsal column-medial lemniscus system, spinothalamic (or anterolateral) system, and spinocerebellar system. They are made up of four successively connected neurons.

What is the spinal cord a pathway for?

The brain and spinal cord are your body’s central nervous system. The brain is the command center for your body, and the spinal cord is the pathway for messages sent by the brain to the body and from the body to the brain.

How many spinal pathways are there?

There are 31 segments, defined by 31 pairs of nerves exiting the cord. These nerves are divided into 8 cervical, 12 thoracic, 5 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 1 coccygeal nerve (Figure 3.2).

What is the spinal nerve pathway?

Spinal Pathways. All spinal pathways involve a sequence of neurons. Excitability is transmitted from one neuron to the next in the sequence. Pathways are either ascending (carrying information from receptors to the brain) or descending (conveying information from the brain to spinal cord neurons).

What is the ascending pathway?

Ascending pathway: A nerve pathway that goes upward from the spinal cord toward the brain carrying sensory information from the body to the brain. In contrast, descending pathways are nerve pathways that go down the spinal cord and allow the brain to control movement of the body below the head.

Which pathways in the spinal cord carry sensory impulses to the brain?

Ascending tracts The spinal cord consists of ascending and descending tracts. The ascending tracts are sensory pathways that travel through the white matter of the spinal cord, carrying somatosensory information up to the brain.

What is the 3 neuron pathway?

A somatosensory pathway will typically have three neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The cell bodies of the three neurons in a typical somatosensory pathway are located in the dorsal root ganglion, the spinal cord, and the thalamus.