Not Sure I'm Understanding Ganglia Properly

[Mission Medical]

I keep reading that "ganglia" are just groups of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system.

What's so special about ganglia? Are ganglia just referring to the cell body, no axons or anything else? Do these cell bodies have dendrites?

Also, in my book it says the following: "In contrast to the somatic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system is made up of two neurons in series that connect the central nervous system and the effector cells. The first neuron has its cell body in the central nervous system. The synapse between the two neurons is outside the central nervous system in a cell cluster called an autonomic ganglion."

I don't really get this. Is this saying that the synaptic cleft (gap) between the two neurons is literally sitting in a cluster of separate, unrelated neuronal cell bodies (ganglia)? So there are literally just lots of cell bodies (No axons or anything else) there, and the synapse lies in them? Why does the synapse even need to be in a cluster of cell bodies?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[jtran7]

A ganglion is referring to the cell bodies of neurons making up the peripheral nervous system

A ganglion just houses the cell bodies which is part of individual neurons. Each neuron has dentrites, cell body and an axon.

so the way the body is organized these ganglia are locations where all PNS cell bodies are kept and their dentrites makes connection to the CNS while their axons goes off to innervate their respective muscles/organs

dendrites receive signals from other axons from a different neuron. The space between is the synaptic cleft

 

[GomerPyle]

SO basically a ganglion is cell body housing for neurons, and multiple neurons are connected to the ganglion (connected to their respective cell body inside the ganglion by presynaptic neurons and postsynaptic neurons, correct)? So if a ganglion had 5 cell bodies, there would be five presynaptic neurons and postsynaptic neurons?

 

[jtran7]

Im a little confused about the way you described it as

"a ganglion is cell body housing for neurons, and multiple neurons are connected to the ganglion (connected to their respective cell body inside the ganglion"

but I think you got the idea in the last half of your post

So the ganglion is just an enlarged structure referring to all the cell bodies of all the neurons making up that PNS nerve bundle (because the cell bodies of the neurons contain the nucleus it is bigger)

so lets say there are five PNS neurons all the cell bodies (where the nucleus of the neurons are located) are concentrated in one region and that region is the ganglion.

CNS connects to PNS

axon of presyntapic neurons (part of CNS) connects to post synaptic neuron (dentrites of PNS neuron)

the dentrites of the postsynaptic neuron has a cell body that is located in the ganglion with other neurons and then their axons goes out and innervate their respective muscles/organs

imagine a knot on a string, on one side of the string (the shorter side) represents all the dentrites, the knot itself represent the ganglion (where all the cell bodies are) and the other side of the string represents the axons

The string is composed of multiple neurons