Neural input—output

The tremendous information processing potential of central neural structures would be useless to an organism unable to make contact with its environment. Such contact is provided, on the one hand, by sensory systems which feed information about environmental energy states to the CNS and, on the other hand, by motor systems which enable the CNS to act on the environment. In practice it is difficult to identify the boundaries between sensory or motor systems and central processing systems. Thus the input-output systems we consider in this chapter will have important components within the CNS as well as communication channels to and from it.