What is a "nerve"?

What is a "nerve"?

Les Weiner (Former Chair of the Department of Neurology, University of Southern California) gives expert video advice on: What are the different areas of the spinal cord, and what are their functions?; How does pain work in the nervous system? and more...

Well, a nerve is something that goes to an organ or a tissue that makes up sensory motor function. It carries fibers from some place to the spinal cord or the brain, or it carries them from the brain and the spinal cord to (another place). So, for instance, your hearing nerve, your auditory nerve, is coming from your inner ear, and that goes into the nervous system to give you sound. It goes to areas in the brain that are equivalent to interpret this. That's a peripheral nerve. Your smell is a peripheral nerve; your taste is a peripheral nerve. All of those are fibers that are going to go directly into the brain. So, the eye movements are a peripheral nerve as well, so if you want to look to the right, you want to look to the left, you want to look up, you want to look down, those are contracting muscles, but the peripheral nerves are what makes the muscles contract.