brain

• Frontal lobe

  40% of cerebral cortex

  Controls high level cognitive functions like thinking, planning

  Contains motor cortex and broca’s area
• parietal lobe

  Somatosensory cortex processes sensory info from skin (eg touch)

  Neurons processing sensory info from face and hands take up half of area of SC
• Temporal lobe

  Each lobe contains auditory cortex - deals w sound info

  Process location, volume, pitch of sounds therefore have role of understanding language

  Contains werwicke’s area
• Occipital lobe 


  Each lobe contains a primary visual cortex and several secondary areas

  Everything we see to the right is initially processed by left visual cortex before being shared w right
• Spinal chord

  Connected to brain via brainstem

  Responsible for reflex actions

  Passes messages to and from brain connecting it to peripheral neuron system
• Cerebellum

  ‘Little brain’ Coordinates posture, balance, movement. Received and integrates info from spinal chord and other areas

  Only 10% of brains weight but contains 50% of its neurons
• Broca’s area

  Responsible for speech production

  Damage causes Broca’s aphasia - slows laborious speech, lacking in fluency
• Wernickes’s area

  Difficulty understanding language

  Produce fluent but meaningless speech
• left hemisphere

  Received info from and controls right side of body

  (Same other way round
• Corpus callosum

  Made of sense collection of nerve cells and allowed communication between left and right hemispheres by passing signals. If removed - ‘split brain syndrome’
• Hippocampus

  short term memories are passed into long term memory via the hippocampus

  part of limbic system and located in medial temporal lobe
• Limbic system

  about emotions and memories

  links to the side of the thalamus and includes hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala
• Amygdala

  emotions and aggression, 2 of them (right and left)

  left amygdala might link to reward system and both positive + negative emotions

  right amygdala more about negatives like fear and sadness