The somatic nervous system consists of afferent fibers that receive information from external sources, and efferent fibers that are responsible for muscle contraction.
They're striated like cardiac muscle tissue, but they're also mostly voluntary, meaning you have to think about using them and activate them with your somatic nervous system.
The Peripheral Nervous System. The peripheral nervous system includes 12 cranial nerves and 31 pairs of spinal nerves. It can be subdivided into the somatic and autonomic nervous systems.