Brain Map

Cerebral Cortex

What do the frontal lobes do?
The frontal lobe controls your personality and where memory, language, judgement, problem solving, and impulse occur.

What is the relationship between selective attention and learning?

Selective attention makes your working capacity greater and allows you to prioritize important information

What is the last part of your brain to develop and what can you do to prevent it from deteriorating? 

Your frontal lobe was the last part of your brain to develop and it you can prevent it from deteriorating with some exercises!

What does the neo cortex do?

The neo cortex controls your senses and awareness and motor skills. 

What is the role of the pre frontal cortex?

The pre frontal cortex controls your personality. It organizes thoughts and actions to match your goals.

What do we know about the pre frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking?

This prevents you from doing more than 2 things at one time. Multitasking does not really exist.

Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development?  Give an interesting fact about this region.

The Broca's area is the part of your brain that is responsible for those. This part of the brain is also associated with  learning a second language!

Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”

The somatosensory cortex is responsible for thinking this.

What does your visual cortex do for you?

The visual cortex helps differentiate colors and distinguishes people's faces.

State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe.

The occipital lobe deals with imagination, and allows you to process long and short term memories. Also, it helps you visualize things.

What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged?

Without your temporal lobe, you would not be able to remember the things you learned or remember things from the past and you would b e forgetful.

What is your “fast brain” and what does it do?

The fast brain ist eh eye field and it controls your eye movements and helps your brain to register information quicky.

Neuron

State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses, and have a positive affect on your life and health.

Sleep, excercise and a healthy diet would influence your synapses.

What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites?

The cross referencing of data stored in your brain may convert the new knowledge into something memorized or learned and this is known as multi sensonry or multi modal.

How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning?

you need to use big picture thinking to fully comprehend a subject and then break it down into relevant parts.

Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important.  Justify your reasoning.

I think glutamate is important because it is used for how you learn. It helps with long term memories.

Limbic System

What does the corpus callosum do?

It has to do with communicating between the left and right hemisphere and it deals with motor and sensory fintion between the two hemispheres.

What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum? 

Music can strengthen the connection of the 2 hemispheres. The brain communicates more effectively.

Why is the thalamus important?

The thalamus is responsible for sensory information and even conciousness. It deals with your awareness and emotions and memory. It has a lot to do with the information you receive.

Relate and Review:
The brain has so many functions and responsibilities. It basically controls your whole body. The frontal lobe is one of the most important. It controls things like your memory, personality and so much more. Different parts of the brains have so many different tasks. The neurons of the brain are important too. Sleep, excercise and a healthy diet would influence your synapses. Lastly is the Limbic System. It involves the corpus callosum which has to do with communication between the left and right hemisphere. 

An interactive infographic by Open Colleges

Brain Dissection Analysis

Today we dissected a sheep brain!
1.

 2. brain stem: regulates heart rate, breathing, sleeping, and eating.
cerebellum: recieves information from the sensory systems, the spinal cord and regulates motor movements
cerebrum: has 4 lobes- Frontal Lobe ( has to do movements, emotions, and reasoning), Pariental Lobe ( has to do with movement, recognition, and orientation), Occipital Lobe ( has to do with vision), and Temporal Lobe ( has to do with memory and speech)
3. Myelin increases the speed at which impulses are produced along the myelinated fiber
4.

5. corpus callosum: connects the 2 hemispheres of the brain
optic nerve: transfers visuals from retina to center of brain
thalamus: correlates important processes like sleep and consciousness
hypothalumus: links nervous system to endocrine system
medulla oblongata: center for respiration and circulation. regulates breathing, vessels, digestion, etc
pons: nerves originate here
6.

Relate and Review:
We dissected a sheep brain. The sheep brain had most of the parts that the human brain had. It was easy to tell the different lobes: frontal, pariental, occipital, and temporal. We were able to so so many different parts of the brain that really relate to the human brain that we have learned in class. We labeled each part that we found and we looked up the function. (info and pictures above!) This dissection was really cool and I would love to dissect it again someday, even another animals brain would be cool!

Sheep Eye Analysis

Sheep Eye Analysis using pictures!

Here are pics from out lab!

The blackish blue fluid area is the cornea
Around the cornea is the sclera

The stem like thing sticking out of the back of the eye is the optic nerve
Around are white soft tissues and these are fatty tissues which act as a cushion to the eye and around the eye also consists of extrinsic muscle

The vitreous humor is in the posterior part of the eye. It is the jelly semifluid part as shown above. The retina is the white thing in the center in front of the choroid (not shown in picture) and shown directly in the center is the lens.

This blue thing is the choroid and it easily peels

The lens!

Clay Brain

We created a sculpture of the brain using play-doh! After roughly getting the shape of the 2 hemispheres of the brain, we labeled each part. It was difficult finding the locations but it was definitely a fun assignment!

"The Woman with a hole in her brain"

This article is about a 24 year old woman who had realized she was living without a cerebellum. This woman lived most of her life normally aside from her unsteady walking and her not being able to normally speak until she was 6. This article vaguely mentions that there are very little people in this world that deals with the same thing she does. The cerebellum plays a role in movement and balance which explains her difficulty to walk. Its suggested that the cortex takes the place of the missing cerebellum.
The Central sulcus is a fold in the cerebral cortex in the brain. It separates the pariental lobe from the frontal lobe and the primary motor cortex from the primary somatosensory cortex. Although it is not really clear, but, I think we would not be able to live without it. It is an important part of the brain and keeps the brain funcioning in a way.

Unit 7 Reflection

In this unit we learned a lot about muscles and their movements. A big part to what we learned was the function of muscles. Muscles do so many things such as movement, maintaining posture, stabilizing joints, and heat generation. Muscles are so important for our body because we use it in everyday activities. My favorite thing we learned was the muscle movement. We learned about different movements suck as contraction, abduction, adduction, and so many more! We even made a song and dance for it during class and it really did help my understanding of each muscle movement. I struggled on learning the different performance enhancing substances. It was hard for me to memorize the side effects and benefits of each but it was okay because I already knew about some of them prior to the lesson.
I would love to learn more about the movements of the body because it was fun to do each movement and it seems easy in a way to learn about them.
This unit, we did a chicken dissection lab which was really cool because it was something people eat everyday and I didn't that the things I saw were things people actually ate and it was so cool! (pictures below!)

Performance Enhancement Reflection

Performance enhancements have its benefits and its risks. Some benefits include short term alertness and enhancement of athletic performance. Some of their risks include possibly skrinking of body parts, nausea, diahrhea, and if really bad, death. My advertisement was specifically on gene doping. Gene doping is a permanent way of inserting steroids into your body. It helps your muscle growth and athletic performance. It is still experimenting so we don't know if it is comepletely safe to use or take in yet. Below is our advertisement!