What is the function of the peripheral nervous system?

Answer 1

Numerous functions: it carries all the informations that comes from the skin to the brain (the sensitive system), and also all the movement commands from the brain to the muscles (motor system). All the information are also integrated in diffent parts of the brain, allowing us to do everything.

The sensitive system carries up information about pain, heat, cold, pressures, friction, pleasure, and tact, through nerve endings distributed beneath our entire skin; it also has terminals in the muscles and joints, that inform how cantracted a muscle is or how bent a joint is at any moment, thus the brain knows where in the space each part of our body is.

The motor system comes down from the brain through the inner part of the spinal chord (the sensitive goes up through the same organ, organised in different bundles, the tracts, at the outter part; different sensations travel through different bundles, in different parts, e.g., tact goes by the back part, the dorsal tract, whereas pain goes by the front and sides). The nerve endings are located in the muscles of the body, and when activated causes them to contract, at different intensities, which will depend on how much strength was required.

Answer 2

The peripheral nervous system carries information to and from the central nervous system. Obviously, its a section of the nervous system.