When a neuron is electrically stimulated by a nearby neuron, the impulse often prompts these neurotransmitters to exit from a nerve cell, sail across a tiny gap, or synapse, and dock at “receptor sites” on the next nerve cell. This way neurotransmitters send an electrical impulse along, cell by cell. Each nerve cell has about one thousand of these synaptic connections; and there are some 10 trillion synapses between nerve cells in the human brain. Some machine! Each nerve cell communicates only with specific others, however, producing nerve networks that connect specific brain parts and
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