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Invertebrates are those animals without a backbone (spinal column). Invertebrates include such animals as insects, worms, jellyfish, spiders and this is only a few of the many types of spineless creatures. Invertebrates have played an important role in discoveries about how the nervous system works. The squid, aplysia (sea hare), leech, horseshoe crab, lobster, and cockroach have all provided scientists with models by which to study the nervous system. The squid even helped win the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1963. Invertebrates are useful animals to study because their nervous system functions in basically the same way as that of vertebrates. Neurons in all animals work using an electrochemical process. Since the nervous system of invertebrates is less complex than that of vertebrates, it is easier to isolate and study neural functions in these animals without backbones. Before reading about the
nervous systems of some invertebrates, let's define a ganglion (plural
is ganglia). A ganglion is a group or collection of nerve cell bodies. |
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