Module 4, The Brain

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Module 4, The Brain
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Brain Talk

• http//youtu.be/FQjgsQ5G8ug

The brain Is a mystery To me!!!
What is he Talking about?
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Link to Video on the Brain

• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/how-does-the-bra
  in-work.html
• If you have time to watch this on your own, it
  will help with your understanding of the brain.

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Looking at the Brain
Click on the link below to see some cool graphics
of the brain.
http//ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-11/memo
ry/brain-interactive.html Parts and functions
of the brain can be found on this
site http//www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/
interactives/organs/brainmap/index.shtml
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Brain Factoids

• At the moment of death all the fluid drains out
  of our brain.
• When alive, our brain is like tofu floating in
  fluid.
• The average weight of a live adult brain (reached
  by age 11 or 12) is 2 7/8 pounds, female and 3
  pounds, male.
• Your brain uses more oxygen than any other part
  of your body.
• The main purpose of your brain is survival.
• Your adult brain has a quadrillion connections.

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What do you remember about the first place you
lived as a child?

• That memory is not in just one place in your
  brain
• It is a multitude of fireworks electrical
  energy in a storm within your brain. It is all
  electro-chemical.
• There are about as many neurons in your brain as
  there are stars in the galaxy.
• The neurons that make up our thoughts are in our
  brain, but we have neurons throughout our body.

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The Parts of the Brainstem

• Brainstem
• Pons
• Reticular Formation
• Medula

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The Brainstem (crossover point) Thalamus
Brainstem
Pons

• Thalamus relay to see, hear, taste, touch, not
  smell

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BrainstemThe primitive inner core

• Pons
• Sleep, arousal, attention
• Medulla
• Vital involuntary functions
• Reticular Formation
• Arousal
• Sleep
• Alertness
• pain

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Parts of the Limbic System

• Thalmus
• Hypothalmus
• Pituitary
• Amygdala
• Hippocampus
• Cerebellum

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Limbic System emotions, memory, and learning

• Pituitary gland
• Master gland
• Controls hormones
• Amygdala
• Fear anger
• Emotional memory (how you feel, felt)
• Hippocampus
• Memory formation for episodic information (where
  you went, what you did, concepts, names dates).

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Why is the so important? (fear
and anger)
Amygdala

• Emotional memories are created here
• Works in concert with bodys stress hormones
• Goes to sympathic nervous system different
  arousal in genders
• Located in right hemisphere in men
• Located in left hemisphere in women

Limbic System Cont.
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Hypothalamus

• What does it do?
• Regulates glands, release of hormones, controls
  the endocrine system through the pituitary gland
• Meets basic needs
• Eat, drink, body temperature
• Four Fs
• Fighting
• Fleeing
• Feeding
• Mating

Limbic System Cont.
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Cerebellum

• The little brain attached to the rear of the
  brainstem. It helps coordinate voluntary
  movements and balance.

http//www.aolnews.com/2011/02/12/chase-britton-bo
y-without-a-cerebellum-baffles-doctors/?icidmaing
7Cmain57Cdl27Csec3_lnk17C43681
Boy without a Cerebellum and Possibly the Pons
Limbic System Cont.
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Athletes Need their Cerebellums (little brain)

• Coordination
• Balance
• Movement

Limbic System Cont.
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The word cerebellum means little brain, and it
looks like a smaller version of the cerebrum.
Its tucked underneath the cerebral hemispheres,
and it also has two hemispheres that are
connected to each other by a thick band of
nerves. Other nerves connect the cerebellum to
the rest of the brain. It is the brain center
for muscle movement, posture, and coordination.
This photo - taken through a light microscope -
shows neuron pathways in the cerebellum magnified
hundreds of times.
Limbic System Cont.
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Review of all the Parts
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Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex
speech production, thinking, planning,
reasoning, impulse control, motivation
Sensory integration
Speech muscles
Auditory social
visual
Use with videocassette Scientific American
Frontiers, Segment 8 Old Brain, New Tricks
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Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

• Temporal Lobes Auditory Perception.
  Categorization. Essential for social interaction.
• Occipital Lobes Contain the visual cortex,
  associations related to visual stimuli
• Parietal Lobes Sensory integration from various
  parts of the body, knowledge of numbers and
  manipulation and location of objects.
• Frontal Lobes star of brain. Contain
  controls for speech production, thinking,
  planning, reasoning, impulse control, motivation.
  
• (Phineas
  Gage)

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Cerebral Cortex

• The cortex is like the covering of the brain,
  sometimes called the bark.
• If you unfolded the cortex, and smoothed it out,
  it would be 2 ½ square feet.

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Memorize the Parts of the Brain
Http//www.thepsychfiles.com/2008/09/episod
e-72-video-memorize-the-parts-of-the-brain/
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Language
Aphasia is an impairment of language, usually
caused by left hemisphere damage either to
Brocas area (impaired speaking) or to Wernickes
area (impaired understanding).
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Specialization Integration

• Brain activity when hearing, seeing, and speaking
  words

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Plasticity in Brain Behavior

• Some rats are housed alone in empty cages
• Their littermate twins are group-housed in cages
  with toys, which are changed frequently
• Richer environments led to heavier, thicker
  brains, more synapses, and better learning

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Plasticity in the Brain
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Methods of Psychophysiological Research

• Twin studies
• Brain damage case studies
• Phineus Gage
• Used to be only way to view brain
• Lesion studies in animals
• Imaging PET, MRI, fMRI
• Using Bio Pac in our classroom - EEG

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The Case of Phineas Gage

• Gage was a railroad construction foreman
• An 1848 explosion forced a steel tamping rod
  through his head
• Others said he was no longer Gage
• Lost his job, worked as a sideshow exhibit

Phineas Gage film The Brain, 25
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Lobotomy Story

• Here is a story about a lobotomy.
• What happens when part of the brain is removed?
• http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story
  Id5014080
• By clicking on this URL, you will be taken to a
  page that has the story of the surgery called
  lobotomy, which was done by Dr. Friedman, from
  1936 on for several years. He was certain it
  would revolutionize medicine.

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Clinical Observation

• Clinical observations have shed light on a number
  of brain disorders. Alterations in brain
  morphology due to neurological and psychiatric
  diseases are now being catalogued.

Tom Landers/ Boston Globe
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Electroencephalogram (EEG)

• An amplified recording of the electrical waves
  sweeping across the brains surface, measured by
  electrodes placed on the scalp.

AJ Photo/ Photo Researchers, Inc.
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Electroencephalogram
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PET Scan

• PET (positron emission tomography) Scan
• a visual display of brain activity that detects a
  radioactive form of glucose while the brain
  performs a given task.

Courtesy of National Brookhaven National
Laboratories
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Positron Emission Tomography

• Active areas have increased blood flow
• Radioactive isotopes (small amounts) are placed
  in the blood
• Sensors detect radioactivity
• Different tasks show distinct activity patterns

Color representation of intensity in this order
white, red, yellow, green, blue, violet
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MRI Scan

• MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) uses magnetic
  fields and radio waves to produce
  computer-generated images that distinguish among
  different types of brain tissue.
• Top images show ventricular enlargement in a
  schizophrenic patient.
• Bottom image shows brain regions when a
  participant lies.

Both photos from Daniel Weinberger, M.D., CBDB,
NIMH
James Salzano/ Salzano Photo
Lucy Reading/ Lucy Illustrations
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Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Magnetic fields align certain ions and compounds
• When field is removed, these molecules release
  energy as radio waves
• Kind of like an x-ray
• Provides clear, 3D images

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Brain Hemispheres?
http//www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid159
2
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Are You Left or Right Dominant?

• What do you see?
• http//www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,220
  49,22535838-5012895,00.html

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The Split Brain
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Two Hemispheres

• Language mostly in left hemisphere
• Detecting emotion, spatial abilities, music are
  in right
• Right controls and receives input from left side
  of body and vice-versa
• The Corpus Callosum Provides a pathway for
  communication between the hemispheres
• http//www.psychexchange.co.uk/videos/view/20236/

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Splitting the Brain

• A procedure in which the two hemispheres of the
  brain are isolated by cutting the connecting
  fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum)
  between them.

Corpus Callosum
Courtesy of Terence Williams, University of Iowa
Martin M. Rother
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Split Brain Patients

• With the corpus callosum severed, objects (apple)
  presented in the right visual field can be named.
  Objects (pencil) in the left visual field cannot.

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Sperrys Split-Brain Experiment

• Split-brain subjects could not name objects shown
  only to the right hemisphere
• If asked to select these objects with their left
  hand, they succeeded
• The right side of the brain doesnt control speech

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Divided Consciousness
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Try This!
Try drawing one shape with your left hand and one
with your right hand, simultaneously.
BBC
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Non-Split Brains
People with intact brains also show left-right
hemispheric differences in mental abilities. A
number of brain scan studies show normal
individuals engage their right brain when
completing a perceptual task and their left brain
when carrying out a linguistic task.
http//www.doctorhugo.org/brain2/brain2.html
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Other Important Organs

• Testes Ovaries Produce estrogens androgens,
  influence sex drive, regulate menstrual cycles,
  cause secondary sex characteristics, and can
  influence brain function.

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Professors Notes, Mod 4

• Brainstem oldest and most innermost. Begins
  with the spinal cord then forms the
• medulla (heartbeat and breathing), above it is
  the pons which helps coordinate movements.
• Thalamus receives info from all senses except
  smell (relay station)
• Reticular Formation strand like neurons inside
  the medulla, pons, thalamus arousal, filters
  incoming stimuli and relays info to other areas.
• Cerebellum little brain smooth coordination
  of voluntary movement, nonverbal learning and
  memory, judgment of time, discriminate sounds and
  textures

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Professors Notes

• The Limbic System older part of brain, doughnut
  shaped, emotional center
• Hippocampus memory
• Amygdala fear and aggression
• Hypothalamus regulate internal body functions
  hunger, thirst, body temperature, sexual
  behavior, reward center (addiction reward
  deficiency)

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Professors Notes

• The Cerebral Cortex newer network, thinking,
  bodys ultimate control and information
  processing center, learning and thinking. 80 of
  the brains weight. Filled with axon
  connections. Four lobes
• Frontal higher brain function thinking,
  expanding, human
• Parietal special, mathematic,
• Occipital vision
• Temporal auditory

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Professors Notes

• Motor functions
• Motor cortex controls movement (outgoing)
• Sensory Cortex senses touch (incoming)
• Association Areas
• Found in all four lobes
• Integrate information, link sensory inputs with
  stored memories
• Enable judgments, planning and processing of new
  memories
• Damage in this area can change personality (Gage)
• Enable math and spatial reasoning

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Professors Notes

• Language
• Brocas Area damage difficulty forming words,
  singing is easy
• Wernickes area damage speak nonsense, no
  comprehension
• Aphasia impaired use of language caused by
  brain damage
• Some can speak but not read
• Some can write but not read
• Some can read but not write

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Professors Notes

• Plasticity Some neural tissue can reorganize in
  response to damage.
• Brain rewires itself, forms new neurons
• Most plastic in childhood, but happens in
  adulthood