Question: How fast does information travel from your brain to the rest of your body?

Rebecca Dewey answered on 23 Jun 2015:

Nerves carry electrical impulses that form the messages/information from the brain to the rest of your body. The speed that this information travels depends on all sorts of things, such as (1) how healthy the nerves are, and if the myelin coating around the outside of the nerve is intact and in good health (2) how thick that particular nerve is and (3) what sort of information it is carrying.

Nerves carry all sorts of information such as movement information to muscles and sensory information from your body to your brain in the form of touch, warmth, pain and proprioception (where your body is in space). The fastest information is the information sent from the brain to the muscles to make movements, and also from the proprioception sensors to the brain (i.e. to tell your brain where your arm is in relation to your body – close your eyes and your brain still knows where your body is!). These messages travel at between 80 and 120 metres per second (up to 432 km per hour!).