Anatomy of the Central Nervous System

Central Nervous System• Brain, spinal cord,

and neurons • Control/

communication system that organizes incoming information from sensory organs, interprets messages, and sends commands to muscles, glands, and organs

Anatomy of the Human Brain• Forebrain: Cerebrum: largest division of the brain,

divided into 2 hemispheres, each of which is divided into four lobes

• Controls higher order thinking, voluntary behavior

Four Lobes of CerebrumFrontal: emotions, memory, decision making, personality

Parietal: senses, spatial awareness

Occipital: processing visual information

Temporal: hearing, language comprehension, memory

Midbrain: 2cm long• Acts as a relay station for auditory and visual information,

controls eye movement, and body movement

Hindbrain: Rear lower portion• Connects brain to spinal cord• Cerebellum: controls

movement, balance, and muscle tone, and coordinating thinking processes

• Pons: “bridge” that transfers info between cerebellum and other parts of brain, coordinates sleep

• Medulla Oblongata: controls involuntary and unconscious functions

• We don’t pay attention to boring things- what we focus on is shaped by memory, culture and past experiences (Dr. John Medina)– Emotional: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with

it? Will it mate with me? Have I seen it before? – Brain is not capable of truly multi-tasking

Attention: Focal (conscious) processing

• Processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and retrieve information

• Information is transferred from short-term (working) memory to long-term memory through the hippocampus

• 1) Encoding • 2) Storage• 3) Retrieval – Hippocampus strengthens associations – Memories are stored in organized ways: semantic network

model (clusters)

Memory: Repeat to Remember

• Broca’s Area: Left hemisphere, associated with speech and language production and ability to articulate crucial ideas in spoken/written language

• Wernicke’s Area: connects to Broca’s area, Posterior Superior Temporal Lobe, comprehension or language processing

• Angular Gyrus: allows us to associate language-related information: auditory, visual, sensory (allows us to perceive word with ideas/sensations/images)

Anatomy of Speech & Language

• Teens rely on limbic system and amygdala for emotional responses as pre-frontal cortex is still developing

Emotions First, Reason Second

The Human Brain

• Visit the four stations and complete each task• Where areas of the brain are used for each

task? • What did you learn about the brain?