AP Psychology, Brain Parts: Buzz Online Textbook

The cerebral cortex is the thin outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres; acts as the main control centre; made of motor and the sensory cortex, and is refered to as" grey matter"

• The cerebral cortex allows us to perform complex behaviors, communicate, learn details, and think 
• Cerebrum: largest part of the brain, divided into two cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. 
• The cerebral contex is the outer layer of the cerebrum. It gives our brain its distinctive wrinkled appearance as it is folded many times to fit on our skull.
• Each cerebral hemisphere is connected by the corpus callosum, an enormous communication network of millions of neurons, which allows info. to flow from side to side.
• The hemispheres are divided into deep grooves called fissures and into 4 lobes- frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
• The Frontal lobe occupies nearly 30% of the brain and is located a front of the cerebral contex, behind our eyes. Areas are responsible for national thoughts, developing hacking on plans, speech, problem solving, working memory,& decision making. Parts of our frontal lobe direct& maintain our attention and keep our ideas while we are distracted by other stimuli. Thus helps define who we are as people, and damage may instill inappropriate social behavior.
• In the left frontal lobe is Broca's Area, which is responsible for controlling the musies for speech Damage would cause Broca's Aphasia.
• Motor Cortex is at the rear most area of the frontal lobe, it sends information to the spinal cond to move muscles. It's responsible for volunteer movement and is divided in the middle of our body. (That’s why the left side of our body controls the right and vice versa.)
• Sensory Cortex: located in front of the parietal lobe, responsible for our senses of touch. When we feel a touch, info. is sent to the thalamus to the somatosensory contex to feel it. (Other than the sense of smell)
• Right hemisphere recieves touch info. from left side and vice- versa
• More sensitive areas, such as lips+ face, have a large cortical area devoted to them on the somatosensory cortex.
• Parietal Lobe: partially devoted to touch. Located in front of the occipital lobe and behind the frontal lobe. It is important in representing spatial relationships between ourselves and objects in our envionment. Most of this lobe is made of association areas.
• Occipital Lobe: located in the back of our brains, is responsible for nisien+ visual processing. Visual areas process properties of an image - Visual Cortex (largest area in occipital lobe), where visual info. is sent, and each hemisphere divides the information.
• Temporal lobe: located just above our ears on both sides, it is responsible for processing auditory information, memory, and recognizing detailed objects (like faces)

—Each side is lateralized. Left temporal lobe is responsible for hearing in the right and vice versa…

• Auditory Cortex is solely  responsible for hearing

—left temporal lobe also has Wernicke's Area that interprets written and spoken language and decodes words and sentences for us

—Damage causes Werneckie's Aphasia: unable to understand what is being said and may not make much sense while speaking 

• Association Areas located within each lobe, they are responsible for higher mental functioning?( ex: calculating, thinking, etc.)
• The Broca’s and  Wernicke's Area are examples of association areas

There are many association areas and they each have a specific specialised function; only the main two have been referred to in these section of notes.

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