The Brain

• What is a cerebral cortex?


  the outer wrinkly bit, responsible for consciousness, intelligence, memory and language
• What is a cerebellum?


  Responsible for muscle contraction
• What is a medulla?


  controls unconscious activities like breathing and heartbeat
• What is a hypothalamus?


  Thermoregulating centre helps manage your body temperature, hunger and thirst, mood, blood pressure and sleep
• What is a MRI scanner?


  a magnetic resonance imaging scanner is a big fancy tube-like machine that can produce detailed picture of the brain`s structures
• How does brain can be stimulated electrically?


  By pushing a tiny electrode into the tissue and giving it a small zap of electricity
• When we view images of the brain we are generally looking at a cross section of brain. 

  What is a cross section? 

  A view into the inside of something made by cutting through it.
• Where in the brain is the medulla found? 

  In the brain stem
• Studying the brain involves matching specific regions of the brain with specific functions.

  What are the three main ways that scientists can do this?

  • Study people with brain damage 
  • Electrically stimulate different parts of the brain
  • Scan the brain, using CT, PET, MRI, or fMRI scanners
• What are the three main reasons treating the brain is so difficult? 

  • There is a huge range of things that can go wrong, from mental illness to infection
  • It is encased within the skull, so is hard to access
  • It is very complicated, so hard to target with medications