The basics of neuroscience: brain anatomy

Since I think neuroscience is incredibly interesting and a lot of my reflections will be about neuroscience, I thought I might be able to spark your interest too with a the few basics about the anatomy of the brain

"The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around." - Thomas Edison (one of my favorite quotes)

We all know the brain and the nervous system are incredibly important, but how do they work? You can refer to the picture below to see a breakdown of the nervous system, however, I am not going to go in-depth into it, since I will just be giving you some basic concepts to spark your interest. 

Clearly, that may look a bit overwhelming, but not to worry, I will mainly going into the different parts of the brain, and will post later about the rest of the stuff on that diagram. 

So the brain is basically the origin of our behavior, and is split into the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain.The forebrain contains the cerebrum, which is responsible for our emotions such as fear, and the hippocampus, which converts our short-term memory to long-term memory (I will later post about how the human memory works for those that are interested). Damage of the hippocampus often causes amnesia, a loss of memory. The forebrain also contains the thalymus, which is the sensory relay station, and the hypothalymus, which is involved in hormonal release, our sleep-wake cycle, and causing hunger. The midbrain, which is the smallest part of our brain, is involved in motor-sensory functions such as coordinating muscle movements. The hindbrain consists of the medulla, which controls autonomic processes such as breathing, digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate, the pons, which controls activity between the two hemispheres, and the cerebellum, which coordinates involuntary movement. 

The brain is also split into hemispheres. The right hemisphere is known for its involvement in creativity whereas the left brain is known for its involvement in logical reasoning and speech. Each hemisphere has four lobes: the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and the temporal lobe. The frontal lobe is responsible for our judgement, while the parietal lobe is responsible for spacial navigation and our sense of touch. The occipital lobe is responsible for our vision while the temporal lobe is known for its involvement in auditory processing. In my next post, I will describe a little bit about the somatosensory cortex and sensory processing so be sure to check it out!