The Brain

Old brain: lack of conscious thought:

• brainstem: responsible for automatic survival functions

  • medulla: controls heartbeat and breathing

    • pons: coordinate movement

• reticular acting system (RAS): maintains consciousness and alertness

  • functions in sleep and arousal from sleep

• thalamus: receives and delivers all sensory messages (except smell)

  • delivery system

• cerebellum: helps coordinate voluntary movement and balance

The Limbic system:

• hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus deal with basic drives, emotions, and memories

• hippocampus: memory processing

• amygdala: aggression (fight) and fear (flight)

• hypothalamus: hunger, thirst, body temperature, and pleasure

  • regulates pituitary gland (hormones)

The cerebral cortex: the body’s ultimate control and information processing

• frontal lobes:

  • prefrontal cortex: judgement, planning, processing new memories

  • motor cortex: speaking, muscle movement

• parietal lobe: somatosensory cortex

• occipital lobe: receive visual information

• temporal lobe: receives auditory information

Hemispheres:

• left: language, math, logic

  • controls right side

• right: art, creativity, emotions

  • controls left side

• corpus callosum: bundle of nerve fibers that connect the hemispheres

  • Roger Sperry discovered the purpose of it and researched its function in split brain patients

• whatever falls on the left side of your eyes goes on the right hemisphere and vice versa

Functional plasticity:

• shifting functions from damaged to undamaged parts of the brain

  • ex. learning how to walk again

Structural plasticity:

• ability to change the physical structure of the brain

  • ex. learning new things

Cortical localization:

• there are specific locations where certain brain functions happen

  • Broca’s area

    • speech production

    • left frontal lobe

  • Wernicke’s area

    • speech comprehension

    • left temporal lobe

  • Aphasia

    • difficulty with processing and comprehending spoken and written word