1. The Brain Brain in skull
Spinal cord in spinal column (tilt your head down and feel the bumps on the back of your neck/back. Those are the brown bones in the picture)

2. The Nervous System (all nerves, no bones or blood vessels shown here)

3. Top view: facing left
Observations: Left and right hemispheres, wrinkles for surface area*
*note: the head would have to be basketball-sized to fit the brain without wrinkles… probably not very fun to give birth to that…

4. Side view, facing left
Observations: Cerebrum (a.k.a. Cerebral Cortex, or just Cortex), cerebellum shown on the bottom right (note different appearance)

5. Cross section (the inside of the right hemisphere), facing left
Observations: midbrain/brainstem, ventricles, cerebellum again

6. Bottom view, facing left
Observations: cerebellum has left and right halves too, brain stem shown again

8. Phineas Gage (1823-1860) -Phineas gage, mid 1800’s railroad worker
-Blasting powder, fuse, sand, tamping iron -> 80 ft away
-2 month recovery
-Disinhibition: Swearing, impatient, short tempered, no attention to consequences
Phineas Gage ( )

9. Mapping brain functions via brain damage (stroke, war, etc.)

10. MRI, fMRI

11. Warren’s MRI (fMRI overlay shows hearing in green)

12. Functional regions

13. Functional regions

14. Blank brain: draw images representative of the functions in each part of the brain

15. Example

16. Take out your Brain
notes from last class
Brain, Spinal cord

17. Fat Cells Blood Cells Muscle Cells
Cell types have different functions and thus different structures
Muscle Cells

18. Neuron
(Brain Cell)
neuron

19. Dendrite
Myelin
Axon terminal
Soma (cell body)
Axon
Parts of a neuron

20. Cell-cell communication

21. Synapse

23. Example signal pathway, getting brain cells to pass messages to control the body

24. Flex your
bicep muscle!
Model this using telephone activity

25. Nerves

26. Neuron Telephone Make a line
The first student is a decision-making neuron in the brain that chooses an appropriate action.
Neurons only send messages across short distances and only in one direction. Each neuron must whisper it to the next neuron in line without asking for a repeat.
The last student, the “effector” (the muscle), performs the action.
The “effector” rotates to the front of the line and becomes the new decision-making neuron.
Rotate until each student gets to play each role.

27. In the telephone game, what represents a neuron, muscle, dendrite, axon terminal, and the neurotransmitters (the chemical message being passed across the synapse)? Label these on the stick figure diagram.

28. Reflection Questions
How well did your group get each message clearly down the line? Did any messages get lost or changed before it reached the end of the line?
What would happen if a real neuron received the wrong message or didn’t receive the message at all?
If we played this telephone game to send a message all the way to the Main Office (in the A building), how many student neurons do you think it would take? How much time do you think it would take?
How do real neurons solve this problem when sending messages to far away parts of the body? (How does its STRUCTURE support its FUNCTION?)