If you are being chased by a bear, what are you going to do? If you are Usain Bolt, you will probably run for your life since running would serve you best. But if you are a big, tough guy, like Hulk Hogan, maybe you'd try to fight the bear. Whichever response you choose, it can be classified as your flight or fight response.
But what exactly controls how you respond when you decide to either stay and fight or run away? That all comes down to the autonomic nervous system (regulates your glands, muscles, organs, etc.), which is split up into 2 parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
So what do these 2 nervous systems do? The sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your body for action. So while you are prepared to either run away or fight the bear, it is getting your body ready and amped up. It is making your heart pump faster, dilating your pupils, and inhibiting bladder conrtaction, just to name a few things. Basically, the sympathetic nervous system is getting your body ready by focusing on what you need for your fight or flight and inhibiting what you don't need (for example, it is not allowing you to go to the bathroom right then and there so you can focus more from defeating the bear).
And the parasympathetic nervous system is trying to calm everything down; it's conserving energy. It is working in opposition to your sympathetic nervous system by slowing heartbeat, contracting your bladder, etc.
So what I want to know is, what would happen if you took out a person's parasympathetic nervous system? What would happen to their body? Would they get too overworked by their sympathetic nervous system? Would their heart start beating way too fast without anything to stop it; would their pupils dilate over their entire eye?
Also, is it even possible to take out someone's parasympathetic nervous system? Is it similar to taking out someone's corpus collosum or is it more intertwined in a person's body?
What do you guys think?
Love the deep thinking, Isaac. It's scary to think what would happen to your body if your parasympathetic nervous system was removed. To tell you the truth, I think you would probably die, since your body wouldn't be able to properly function ever again. Now is it possible to remove it? I personally don't think so, since too much of your body relies on it.
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