Brain Stem/Hindbrain

• Pons - involved in sleeping, waking, and dreaming (involved in facial expressions)

• Medulla- Responsible for certain automatic functions such as breathing and heart rate

• Reticular activating system (RAS) - Arouses cortex and screens incoming information

• We have no control/conscious over these

Cerebellum

• Means little brain

• Regulated movement and balance

• Involved in remembering simple skills and acquired reflexes

• Plays a part in human development

• Analyzing sensory information

• Solving problems

• Understanding words

The Cerebral Cortex

• It is what makes us human, higher thinking

• Made up of dense pack neurons we call “gray matter”

• Glial cells - support brain cells

• Wrinkles are called fissures

• Frontal lobe is the higher level thinking last lobe to fully develop, motor skills, decision making

• Parietal lobe is primarily sensory

• Occipital lobe is the vision back of the brain

• Temporal lobe primary function is speech comprehension and speech creation

• Auditory cortex - part of temporal lobe

The Cerebrum

• Largest brain structure

• Two cerebral hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum

• In charge of most sensory, motor, and cognitive processes

• Surrounded by cerebral cortex, a collection of several thin layer of cells (gray matter)

Thalamus

• Switchboard operator of the brain

• Receives sensory signals from the spinal cord and sends them to the other parts of the forebrain

• Every sense except smell

Hypothalamus

• Perhaps the most important structure in the brain

• Controls and regulates :

  • Body temperature

  • Sexual arousal

  • Hunger

  • Thirst

  • Endocrine System

  • The autonomic nervous system

• It is slow but powerful

Pituitary gland

• Small endocrine gland which releases hormones and regulates other endocrine glands

• Master gland within endocrine system

The amygdala

• Responsible for

  • Arousal

  • Regulation of emotion

  • Initial emotional response to sensory information

  • Plays important role in

  • Mediating anxiety and depression

  • Emotional memory

  • Involved in volatile emotions like anger

Hippocampus

• Involved in the processing and storage of memories

• Responsible for storage of new information n memory

Accidents

Phineas Gage Story

Railroad worker who was a well liked person. One day rails explosion happened and he had some steel go through his cheek and out his head. He somehow survived but doctors didn't remove the nail because he could die. When he went back to work his personality changed because of brain damage/frontal lobes were damaged

Hemispheric Specialization

• Corpus Callosum bundle of nerves that allow hemispheres to communicate

• Medical reasons to cut the cc but they can't go back together

• Done in severe epilepsy to prevent extreme epilepsy seizures

• Causes no damage to person/brain

Left Hemisphere

• Verbal processing

• Wernick’s area = language comprehension

• Broca’s area = language production

• Controls right side of body

• Attention to details, logic, math

Right hemisphere

• Non-verbal

• Pattern recognition

• Emotional comprehension

• Comprehension of tone, sarcasm, irony, etc

• More artistic

• Facial emotion