Thank you for taking your time to read my contribution to the wonderful Paul Brook’s blog. I will be blogging about the mind and brain with the intention of bringing seemingly complex and ‘hard-to-understand’ concepts of neuroscience to everyone. I would really like to encourage anyone who is interested to email or tweet myself (@Darren_Rhodes) any questions they have about the brain. For example, if you would like to know more about how our brain codes information, how our brain transports information or how our brain evolved through the millennia: please get in touch.
So in today’s short but sweet blog – I would like to bring the brain to you in its striking and global form. What you see in the picture is a real human brain divided into different lobes. The first thing we need to understand is that the brain is split into two hemispheres (two halves). What you see you below is the right hemisphere. The right hand side of the image is the ‘frontal’ area which would be facing forward, and the left hand side is towards the back of the head. An important concept to understand is that different brain regions (or lobes) have different functions. For example, the frontal lobe (see image) is involved in a whole host of processes that essentially make us ‘human’; it helps us to plan events, or inhibit certain social actions. The temporal lobe is involved in long-term memory as well as language etc. The parietal lobe helps us locate stimuli in the environment, and the occipital lobe helps us process complex visual information. The cerebellum (Latin for ‘little brain’) is a tightly woven ball of neurons that helps our balance as well as being involved in the automatic processing of actions and information.
I hate to be a tease, but what you see in this image is just the external or outer surface of the brain. There are tons of structures deep within the brain that, hopefully, over the next few months we can investigate further.
