Question: What sorts of signals does the brain use to communicate sensations, thoughts and actions? Any feedback would suburb!

Paul Brack answered on 13 Jun 2015:

The brain, along with the spinal cord, make up the central nervous system – the body’s control centre. This is connected to the rest of the body by (and indeed is itself made up of) cells called neurons. Neurons send and receive messages between the body to the brain by using electrical and chemical transmitters. By this I mean that electrical impulses that correspond to a message are passed along the cell, and at the end of the cell, these electrical impulses trigger the release of chemicals, which move and trigger an electrical impulse in the next neuron cell. This passing along of messages is called transmission, and hence the term electrical and chemical transmitters.

Different types of neurons send different messages.
Sensory neurons bring messages about sensations, like taste, touch and smell, from the relevant part of your body (eg, your mouth or nose) to your brain.
Association neurons are present in large quantities in your brain. They gather the information from the sensory neurons, and decide what to do about it.
Motor neurons are the third type of neurons. They control your movement. Once the association neurons have decided what to do about what the sensory neurons told them, the association neurons tell this to the motor neurons, and this is how we respond to things.

So for example, if I put something rotten in my mouth, or if Justin Bieber started singing, the sensory neurons in my mouth or ears would taste or hear it and the message would be sent to the association neurons in my brain. My association neurons would decide on an appropriate response (in both of these cases, vomit), and then pass the message of what to do out to my motor neurons, which would then cause my body to respond.