Basic Neural Units of the Brain: Neurons, Synapses and Action Potential
Jiawei Zhang

TL;DR
This paper introduces the fundamental units of the human brain, including neurons, synapses, and action potentials, providing detailed explanations suitable for educational purposes.
Contribution
It offers a detailed tutorial on the basic bio-structural components of the brain, complementing previous educational articles.
Findings
Explains the structure and function of neurons, synapses, and action potentials.
Provides quantitative data on neuron and synapse counts in the human brain.
Serves as an educational resource for understanding brain bio-structures.
Abstract
As a follow-up tutorial article of [29], in this paper, we will introduce the basic compositional units of the human brain, which will further illustrate the cell-level bio-structure of the brain. On average, the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons and many more neuroglia which serve to support and protect the neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synapses. In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell. Such signals will be accumulated as the membrane potential of the neurons, and it will trigger and pass the signal pulse (i.e., action potential) to other neurons when the membrane potential is greater than a precisely defined threshold voltage. To be more specific, in this…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCellular transport and secretion · Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies · Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior
