Karen Siyuan Chen

 Connect the brain and the peripheral nervous system  An extension of the brain, protected by bone and spinal fluid  Can act without the brain  a simple reflex  The brain quickly involved when pain came

 Forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain  Cerebral cortex, limbic system  Frontal lobe, Partial lobe, Occipital lobe, Temporal lobe  Thalamus, hypothalamus  Cerebellum, medulla, pons

 The largest part, carry out cognitive and motor functions, such as memory, logic, self- awareness  Contains the motor cortex, Broca’s area, the frontal association areas

 Amygdala  responses to emotion, particularly to unpleasant or punishing stimuli  Hypothalamus  regulates hunger, thirst, sexual behavior, internal body temperature, regulates pituitary gland (hormones)  Hippocampus  stores new memories, responses to new or unexpected stimuli and navigational ability

 Thalamus  sleep circle, learn new verbal information, relay station  Medulla  heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, coughing, swallowing, functions automatically  Reticular formation  arousal and attention, protect from danger, determine how alert we are

 Controls body’s ability to execute smooth, skilled movement  Regulates muscle tone and posture  Coordinates the series of movements necessary to perform many simple activities without conscious effort

 Two cerebral hemispheres  Corpus callosum  physically connects at the bottom by a thick band of nerve fibers, transfers the information and coordinate the activities between the hemispheres.  Cerebral cortex  responsible for the higher mental processes of language, memory and thinking.

 Sensory areas: vision, hearing, touch, pressure, temperature  Motor areas: voluntary movement  Association areas: house memories and involved in thought, perception and language

Planning, decision making speech Sensory Auditory Vision

 Right hemisphere: visual, spatial relations  controls left side of body  Left hemisphere: speaking, writing, reading, speech comprehension, comprehension of the logic information, mathematical calculation, analytical logic  controls right side of body  How about you?

 Split-brain subjects stared at a dot and viewed a composite of two faces (A).  When asked what they saw, subjects chose the child— the image sent to the verbal left hemisphere (B).  But when subjects pointed to the face with the left hand, they chose the woman with glasses—whose image was received by the right hemisphere (C) (Levy et al., 1983).

Contralateral Homunculus Unequal representation

 Expression, producing speech sounds  Aphasia  not able to use or understand language

 Comprehension of written and spoken language  Aphasia  fluent, clear speech but does not make any sense

 Electroencephalogram  1920s  Record electrical activity per millisecond  Check learning abilities, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, sleep disorders, or other neurological problems  Beta wave : mental / physical activity  Alpha wave : deep relaxation  Delta wave : slow-wave (deep) sleep

 Computerized axial tomography  Early 1970s  Large doughnut-shaped equipment  X-ray tube  Measure cross-sectional images  Reveal the structures within the brain as well as abnormalities and injuries

 Magnetic resonance imaging  1980s  No X-ray  More clearer, more detailed images  Find abnormalities in the central nervous system and in other systems of the body  CT & MRI CAN’T reveal what the brain is doing

 Positive-emission tomography  Mid 1970s  Identify malfunctions that cause physical and psychological disorders  Also for normal brain activities  Maps the patterns of blood flow, oxygen use, glucose consumption  Also shows the action of drugs and other biochemical substances in the brain and the other bodily organs

 Functional MRI  1990s  Provides image of both brain structure and brain activity  Requires no injections  Identify location of activity more precisely than PET  Can detect changes that take place in less than a second, compared with about a minute for PET

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