 Hey everybody, Dr. O, and this is going to talk about how we perceive the world around us. I like to call this the neural arc. I actually use the same five steps to explain the reflex arc. The only difference is the information is going to be processed in the conscious reaches of your mind here instead of in the spinal cord, like with the regular spinal reflexes. So there are five steps. You'll see here it's talking about upper and lower motor neurons. I don't really worry about that at this point. So here we see number one. We have these peripheral sensory receptors in our skin, primarily the temperature receptors or thermal receptors we're worried about here. So step number one, there's a stimulus that's going to activate those receptors. And then the activation of those receptors is going to send information down a afferent or sensory nerve. So here we see the sensory nerves are going to be the blue ones there that are going to send that signal up towards the brain. Now this was a reflex. It would just turn around at the spinal cord and you would respond. But in this case, we're going to go all the way to our primary sensory cortex, which is the post-central gyrus of our parietal lobe. So the sensory receptor has been triggered and now it's sending a signal up that sensory nerve. Step three is where information is going to be processed. This is what makes reflexes different from our conscious perception like we're talking about here. So you see on the screen there it says the sensory pathway reaches the cerebral cortex for conscious perception. If it feels good, we're going to know it feels good. If it feels bad, too hot or too cold, then we're going to have to respond, right? But either way, we're now consciously aware of what's going on, which means this information has traveled up those sensory nerves to our filter, the thalamus. The thalamus has passed this information on to the primary sensory cortex, which is the post-central gyrus of the parietal lobe and the sensory association areas. So now we have to decide what to do, right? We've all taken a shower. If the water feels perfect, then we put our head in it. If it's too hot or too cold, we're going to respond differently by changing the temperature. But now we're going to travel back the other way. So now the motor nerves have been activated. So that's going to be the red nerves here. And they're going to send the signal information down the brain, down the spinal cord, to a peripheral effector. So this started with the receptor, then a sensory nerve, then the information was processed. Now we have a motor nerve involved until we reach the effector, which is going to be, in this case, this is a somatic response. So it's going to be your skeletal muscle. So either quickly pulling your hand away and turning the temperature of the water up or down because it was too hot or too cold, or again, putting your head in there and starting to take your shower. So that's called the neural arc. So really what's cool about this is that it's so similar to reflexes is that these complex neurological pathways and all these higher order functions that we have have just been built on these reflexive pathways. So it shouldn't surprise you that there's not any real huge differences. Okay. So I hope this helps. That's what I call the neural arc or how we respond to our environment. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.