The Brain Flashcards
Anthropods
First organisms with a central nervous system. about 520 million years ago.
Neanderthals
Lived about 350,000 to 28,000 years ago. Brain volume of 1,450 cc.
Australopithecus
4 million years ago. Brain volume 450-650 cc.
Home Erectus
1.6 million to 100,000 years ago. Brain volume of 900cc.
Home Sapiens
200,00 years ago to present. Brain volume of 1,300 cc.
Three Main Brain Structures
Hindbrain, Midbrain, Forebrain
Hindbrain
Regulates breathing, heart rate, arousal, and other basic survival functions.
The first brain function to develop
Three main parts of Hindbrain
Pons, Cerebellum, and Medulla
Medulla
A Hindbrain structure that extends directly from the spinal cord; regulates breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. also involved in various kinds of involuntary reflective responses like coughing, sneezing, and vomiting.
Pons
A hindbrain structure that serves as a bridge between the lower brain regions and the higher midbrain. and forebrain activity.
Cerebellum
A hindbrain structure involved in body movement, balance, coordination, fine-tuning motor skills, and cognitive activities such as learning and language.
Midbrain
The second brain region to evolve after the hindbrain. It’s the smallest of the three regions. controls the eye muscles, process auditory and visual information and initiate voluntary movement of the body. The midbrain, the medulla, and the pons together are sometimes referred to as the brain stem.
Reticular formation
A network of nerve fibers that runs up through both the hindbrain and the midbrain; is crucial to waking up and falling asleep. It is considered a major player in the maintenance of wakefulness.
Giuseppe Moruzzi and Horace Magoun
They were the first neuroscientists to study the reticular formation.
Parkinson’s Disease and midbrain function
People with Parkinson’s disease have problems with midbrain function, due to the loss of neurons that use dopamine there.
Forebrain
The last major region to evolve. consists of the cerebrum and other structures, like the thalamus and the limbic system. Controls cognitive, sensory, and motor function, and regulate temperature, reproductive functions, eating, sleeping, and the display of emotions. The forebrain is bilateral- one on each side of the brain.
Thalamus (sensory relay station)
A forebrain structure that receives information from the senses and relays it to the cerebral cortex for processing.
Olfaction
The sense of smell.
unique in the case of the thalamus. It has a thalamic relay, but unlike other senses, it has direct connections to the memory and emotional processing areas of the brain in the limbic system.
The Limbic System
Controls motivation and emotion. it includes the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and cingulate gyrus.
A connection group of forebrain structures (hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and cingulate gyrus) that share important information function in emotion, memory, and motivation and regulate autonomic and endocrine function.
Hypothalamus
A limbic structure; the master regulator of almost all major drives, and motives we have, such as hunger, thirst, temperature, and sexual behavior; also controls the pituitary gland.
Pituitary gland
Responsible for producing and controlling the hormones our bodies produce.
Hippocampus
A limbic structure that wraps itself around the thalamus; plays a vital role in learning and memory.
Amygdala
A small almond-shaped structure located directly in front of the hippocampus; has connections with many important brain regions and is important for processing emotional information, especially that related to fear.
Cingulate Gyrus
A belt-like structure in the middle of the brain; plays an important role in attention and cognitive control.
Basal ganglia
A collection of structures surrounding the thalamus; involved involuntary motor control.
Four lobes of the cerebral cortex
Each of the four lobes has a counterpart on the opposite side of the brain. Most important for thinking, planning, and integrating the brain’s activity are the frontal lobes, whereas hearing is processed in the temporal lobes.
Cerebrum
Each of the large halves of the brain; covered with convolutions, or folds.
Composed of four large areas called lobes, and they are bilateral-located on both sides.
Frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes
Cerebral cortex
The thin outer layer of the cerebrum, in which much of human thought, planning, perception, and consciousness takes place.
Frontal lobe
In front of the brain, make up one-third of the area of the cerebral cortex. one important region of the frontal lobe is the primary motor cortex.
Eduard Hitzig
In the 1860s, this German physiologist noticed that touching the surface of a specific side of the brain caused a soldier’s body to twitch on the opposite side.
Cortical Localization
Different parts of the cortex are responsible for different functions.
Phineas Gage’s accident
A famous story in neuroscience. A case story of frontal lobe involvement in impulse control and personality. September 1848 Phineas Gage’s accident to his frontal lobe changed his personality.
Parietal Lobes
Make-up the top and rear sections of the brain, are, important in the sensation and perception of touch.
Somatosensory cortex
A strip of the parietal lobe involved in the processing and perception of sensory information from the body, especially temperature, touch, pressure, and pain. lies directly behind the motor cortex of the frontal lobe. these two regions are “twins” The face, lips, or toes, for example, activates the same areas of both cortexes.
Output: Motor Cortex
The left hemisphere section controls the body’s right side
Input: Somatosensory Cortex
The left hemisphere section receives input from the body’s right side.
Insula
A small structure inside the cerebrum that plays an important role in the perception of bodily sensations, emotional states, empathy, and addictive behavior.
Corpus callosum
Nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain.
Aphasia
A deficit in the ability to speak or comprehend language.
People with aphasia often have damage or lesions in the same region of the left frontal lobe, this region is responsible for the ability to produce speech, which is commonly referred to as Broca’s Area.
Temporal lobes
Lie directly below the frontal and parietal lobes and right behind the ears. Has different functions, but the main one is hearing. Houses the auditory cortex, where sound information arrives from the thalamus for processing. Also houses and connects with the hippocampus and amygdala, and, so, are also involved in memory and emotion.
Occipital lobes
Occupy the rear of the brain. Optic nerves travel from the eye to the thalamus and then to the occipital lobes- to the primary visual cortex.
Cerebral Hemisphere
The human cerebrum is divided into two equal hemispheres. look similar, but the hemispheres differ in shape, size, and function.
Left Hemisphere
Processes information in a more focused and analytic manner.
Right Hemisphere
Integrates information in a more holistic, or broader manner. insights and solutions to problems are more likely to occur in the right hemisphere.
The functional difference between the cerebral hemisphere
is in language. speech and language comprehension involve two separate regions in the left hemisphere.
Ernest Auburtin
Diagnosed a ‘softening’ of the anterior lobes” in a patient who understands but could not produce speech.
Broca’s area
The area in the left frontal lobe responsible for the ability to produce speech.
Wernicke’s area
The area deep in the left temporal lobe responsible for the ability to speak in meaningful sentences and to comprehend the meaning of speech.
Slipt-Brain-Research
This shows that we can know something even if we cannot name it
The visual field of the brain
Information from the two visual fields is processed on the opposite side of the brain.
Neuroplasticaty
The brain ability to adopt new functions, reorganized itself, or make new neural connections through life, as a function of experience.
Neurogenesis
The development of new neurons
Arborization
The growth and formation of new dendrites
Synaptogenesis
The formation of entirely new synapses or connections with other neurons
Fred “Rusty” Gage
The person most responsible for demonstrating neurogenesis in humans. another person was Elizabeth Gould
Electroencephalography (EEG)
A method for measuring brain activity in which the electrical activity of the brain is recorded from electrodes placed on a person’s scalp.
Event-related potential (ERP)
A technique that extracts electrical activity from raw EEG data to measure cognitive processes.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
A brain imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to produce detailed images of the structure of the brain and other soft tissues.
Functional MRI
A brain imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to produce detailed images of activity in areas of the brain and other soft tissues. Tells us about brain activity, unlike MRI.
Based on how the brain uses blood oxygen. where activity occurs. does not provide precise measures of when activation occurs.
Positron emission tomography (PET)
A brain imagining technique that measures blood flow to active areas in the brain. involves injecting the participant/ patient with a radioactive form of oxygen (or glucose)
Gray matter
is the brain tissue composed of neuron cell bodies
white matter
Brain tissue made up of white myelinated axons.
Diffusion tensor imagining
A method of brain measurement similar to MRI that provides a measure of white matter rather than grey matter; ideal for examining connections between brain regions, rather than those regions themselves.
Near-infrared spectrometry
Uses light rather than magnets to produce images of brain tissue.
