An army division is composed of many thousands of men who perform a wide variety of duties.
In order to control the activities of so many soldiers, the commanding officer should know what is going on in all the units of his division. Only then can he give orders to nay of these units. This requires a system of communication. A telephone network is set up, for this purpose.
When a battle is in progress, soldiers posted near the battle line can telephone reports of action back to their headquarters. Thus the general gets informed of the situation.
The general gets the messages from these posts. Using this information, and calling on his training and experience, he issues orders to be followed by soldiers under his command. These orders travel back along the same telephone wires. Let us follow a similar situation within the human body.
Let us suppose that you have accidentally knocked a pencil off your desk and want to pick up. When the sound of the falling pencil reaches your ears along two nerves - auditory nerves and then to your brain. Your ears are similar to the posts near the battle line, your nerves similar to the telephone wires, and the electrical impulses similar to the messages that move along the wires.
When the brain receives electric impulses from the ears, a particular part of the cerebrum preceives the impulses as sound, and passes this information on to another part of the cerebrum, one that is concerned with recognition. This part of the brain calls on the part that stores information : the memory.
If you ever before heard a pencil fall, your memory recognizes the sound. Now, you are aware of what has happened.
This situation is similar to that of the general who gets battle reports, and then calls on his training and past experience to help him get a clear picture of what is taken place at the battle field.
Once your brain is aware of the fallen pencil, it decides to pick up the pencil. Electrical impulses go from your brain to the muscles of your eyes, which then move about seeking to bring the pencil into view.
This is similar to that of the general who sends messages to frontline posts asking for more information on the battle.
When the pencil is brought into view, electrical impulses flash back to your cerebrum, which must again go through the process of perceptions and recognition, in order to identify the pencil. Here we have new reports coming back to the commanding general who interprets them.
Having located the pencil, your cerebrum now sends hundreds of electrical impulses along nerves to the many muscles that must be moved when you bend over, reach out your arm, close your fingers around the pencil, and then straighten up again. These impulses and the responding muscular movements are similar to messages from the general going out over the telephone wires and the soldiers acting upon the general's orders.
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