- 1神經元（也說「神經細胞」）
A neuron is one nerve cell — the basic unit your brain and nervous system are built from. A neuron's job is to carry a message. It takes in a signal from other cells at one end, and passes a signal out the other end to the next cell, or to a muscle, or to a . Your brain has something like 86 billion of them, all passing messages to each other. That is, as far as we can tell, what thinking is made of. The word is normal in biology, medicine and psychology classes, and it has spread out from there: people now say "neurons" in everyday talk about the brain, as in "my neurons aren't this morning", meaning "I can't think today". That use is a joke, but a very common one. You will also meet "neuron" in computer talk about AI — an artificial neuron in a neural network is a small piece of maths named after the real cell because it also takes signals in and sends one signal out. It is a borrowed name, not the same thing, and it is much, much simpler than a real neuron. Note that a neuron is a whole cell, not a whole nerve: a nerve out in your arm or leg is a bundle of long parts of many neurons, wrapped together like wires in a cable. The adjective is "neural", not "neuronal" for everyday use, though "neuronal" does exist in scientific writing.
組成From the Greek word neuron, which meant "nerve" (and before that, "sinew" — the tough cord that ties muscle to bone; the old idea was of a cord running through the body). English took it in through New Latin as a science word. You can also read it as neuro- ("nerve") + -on, where -on is the ending used for small units in science.
同家族的字
- nervethe same Greek/Latin root for the cords running through the body — nerve and neuron are doublets, the same old word arriving in English by two different roads
- neurologyneuro- 'nerve' + -logy 'study of' — the medical study of the nervous system
- neuroticbuilt on the same neuro- 'nerve'; it once literally meant 'of the nerves'
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
neuronnoun/ˈn(j)ʊɹɑn/
- 1
biologycytologymedicineA cell of the nervous system, which conducts nerve impulses; consisting of an axon and several dendrites. Neurons are connected by synapses.
- The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.
- 2
biologynatural-scienceszoologyA nervure of an insect's wing.
- 3
A mathematical function serving as an essential unit of an artificial neural network.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。