The diagram given below is an external view of the human brain. Study the same and answer the questions that follow: The diagram given below is an external view of the human brain. Study the same and answer the questions that follow:
What is the function of Cerebrospinal fluid?
Topic: Cerebrospinal fluid
Answer
It acts as a SHOCK-ABSORBING CUSHION, protecting the delicate brain and spinal cord from mechanical injury and jerks. It also provides a MEDIUM FOR EXCHANGE of nutrients, respiratory gases and waste products with the nerve cells, and keeps the pressure around the brain constant.
Give BOTH functions — PROTECTION and EXCHANGE. The second is the one candidates forget.
THE PROTECTIVE ROLE is the obvious one: the brain effectively FLOATS in this fluid, so a knock to the skull is absorbed rather than transmitted directly to the nervous tissue.
THE EXCHANGE ROLE is less obvious but important: nervous tissue has no blood vessel reaching every individual neuron, so the CSF acts as the go-between, carrying nutrients and oxygen in and wastes away — rather as tissue fluid does elsewhere in the body.
It lies BETWEEN THE ARACHNOID AND THE PIA MATER — note the position, since questions ask for it.