The brain and spinal cord work together, the cord acting as a medium between the brain, in which all the higher psychical processes, such as will, thought, etc., originate, and the muscular apparatus. The cord, however, has some action entirely independent of the brain, as is seen in _reflex action_. This action is entirely involuntary, so that the cord is sometimes spoken of as the seat of involuntary action, commonly called reflex action. All unconscious acts are reflex acts, as when the hand is drawn away from a hot iron. If an impulse is sent along one of the sensory fibers, it enters the cord through the posterior horn, where its nerve cell is found. Then, through some connection between the nerve cell of the sensory fiber and that of the motor fiber the impulse is transmitted to the motor cell and another impulse is sent out of the cord along the motor fiber of the nerve to the muscle. One of the commonest reflexes is the _knee-jerk_. Reflex action is important because the reflexes are interfered with, delayed, destroyed, or increased in different diseases. The time normally required for a reflex act is very brief, that for the knee-jerk being about three one-hundredths of a second. The nerves of the head, known as the _cranial nerves_, arise from the brain, while the rest of the body is supplied by the spinal nerves, which come off at intervals from the spinal cord. The cranial nerves consist of twelve pairs: (1) The olfactory or nerve of smell, (2) the optic or nerve of sight, (3) the motor oculi, (4) the patheticus, which controls the eye, (5) the trigeminus or trifacial, a nerve of general sensation, motion, and taste, (6) the abducens, a motor nerve, (7) the facial nerve of the face, ear, palate, and tongue, (8) the auditory or nerve of hearing, (9) the glosso-pharyngeal, nerve of sensation and taste, (10) the pneumogastric or vagus, which is both motor and sensory and governs respiration, the heart, and the stomach, (11) the spinal accessory, to the muscles of the soft palate, and (12) the hypoglossal, the motor nerve to the tongue. The _spinal nerves_ also are arranged in pairs: Eight cervical pairs, twelve dorsal or thoracic, five lumbar, five sacral, and one coccygeal, these titles denoting their point of origin near the vertebra of the same name. Each of these nerves arises by two roots, an anterior motor root from the anterior horn of gray matter and a posterior sensory root from the posterior horn, the latter having a ganglion upon it. After emerging from the cord the two roots unite to form the nerve, that the nerve may contain both motor and sensory fibers. The motor fibers are called efferent because they carry impulses _from_ the cord, while the sensory are called afferent because they carry impulses back _to_ the cord. After leaving the cord the nerves unite to form plexuses, which again divide into various nerve trunks and are distributed to the muscles.