Control Information and the Nervous System

The Nervous System is a huge network of cells called neurons to transmit information from various parts of the body to the brain and from the brain back to them. The information happens to be transmitted electrochemically. The brain is the controller of everything that happens in the body to sustain life on a 24/7 basis and it also controls behaviour of the organism in the outside word.

To act as a controller to sustain life, the brain must receive state information from the body it controls and transmit control information to back to it. the state information may be called a stimulus while the control information is called a response to it. The control to sustain life is autonomous and reactive and functions without our awareness of it although it, like all existence, is run by consciousness that underlies it all.

For the role of the brain in sustaining life, the nervous system is responsible for the flow of information as follows:

  1. Transmit state of the body it senses from the location where a nerve begins to the brain, and
  2. Transmit information for motor control from the brain to the location in the body originating the state information.

For the role of the brain in controlling behaviour in the outside world, the nervous system plays the following role:

  1. Transmit information from the external world perceived through the sense organs, and
  2. Transmit motor information from the brain to the related muscles of the body to respond to the perceptions received. The motor information may be reactive, considered or proactive.

In addition, the nervous system, at times, reactively and autonomously generates a reflexive response of which we are not initially aware although we may become aware after the fact of its happening.

The system of nerves fills the role of information transmission to sustain existence through a control loop run by the brain. All vertebrates are equipped by a system of nerves comprising the control loop. Invertebrates micro-organisms however do not have a nervous system. Instead they have some kind a primitive sensing and motor mechanism acting in a similar sustaining role. 

Click here for information on further details of the nervous system.