How the Brain Works: The Facts Visually Explained (How Things Work)

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Cranial nerve 3: The oculomotor nerve controls pupil response and other motions of the eye, and branches out from the area in the brainstem where the midbrain meets the pons. Have your friend sit at a table with their dominant hand exposed over the edge, and have them make a pinching hold with their fingers. Grab a hold of the ruler by pinching it on the short side near the 30 cm mark and hold it upright such that the 0 cm end is just between your friend’s fingers. Drawing on the latest neuroscience research, this visual guide makes the hidden workings of the human brain simple to understand. How the Brain Works begins with an introduction to the brain’s anatomy, showing you how to tell your motor cortex from your mirror neurons. Moving on to function, it explains how the brain works constantly and unnoticed to regulate heartbeat and breathing, and how it collects information to produce the experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The chapters that follow cover memory and learning, consciousness and personality, and emotions and communication.

Each brain hemisphere (parts of the cerebrum) has four sections, called lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital. Each lobe controls specific functions. Cranial nerve 5: The trigeminal nerve is the largest and most complex of the cranial nerves, with both sensory and motor function. It originates from the pons and conveys sensation from the scalp, teeth, jaw, sinuses, parts of the mouth and face to the brain, allows the function of chewing muscles, and much more.Neuroscience researchers Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo wrote How Your Brain Works for readers to explore those very questions, offering a practical guide—accessible and useful to readers from middle schoolers to college undergraduates to curious adults—for learning about the brain through hands-on experiments. Frontal lobe. The largest lobe of the brain, located in the front of the head, the frontal lobe is involved in personality characteristics, decision-making and movement. Recognition of smell usually involves parts of the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe contains Broca’s area, which is associated with speech ability.

Before the three arteries reach “their” brain region, where they split into smaller branches, they are close together below the brain. In this area, they are connected to each other by smaller blood vessels – forming a structure similar to a traffic circle. The arteries are connected to each other in other areas as well. The advantage of these connections is that blood supply problems in the brain can be compensated for to some extent: For example, if a branch of an artery gradually becomes narrower, blood can still flow to the part of the brain it supplies through these alternative routes (collateral blood flow).Have you ever asked yourself why you can't remember anything from before the age of three, why people experience deja vu, or how a bundle of cells in our heads can produce the remarkable phenomenon that is human consciousness? Drawing on the latest neuroscience research, this visual guide makes the hidden workings of the human brain simple to understand. Cranial nerve 10: The vagus nerve allows sensation around the ear and the digestive system and controls motor activity in the heart, throat and digestive system. The pineal gland is located deep in the brain and attached by a stalk to the top of the third ventricle. The pineal gland responds to light and dark and secretes melatonin, which regulates circadian rhythms and the sleep-wake cycle. Ventricles and Cerebrospinal Fluid Are men’s and women’s brains really different? Why are teenagers impulsive and rebellious? And will it soon be possible to link our brains together via the Cloud? The arachnoid mater is a thin, weblike layer of connective tissue that does not contain nerves or blood vessels. Below the arachnoid mater is the cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF. This fluid cushions the entire central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and continually circulates around these structures to remove impurities.

Tell your friend that when they see you release the ruler, they are to pinch shut and grab it as fast as possible. Try not to make any sounds, gestures, or other hints that you are releasing the ruler. They have to react to the visual stimulus of seeing the ruler being released. Record the centimeter mark where they pinched the ruler, and repeat this a few times. MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.The spinal cord extends from the bottom of the medulla and through a large opening in the bottom of the skull. Supported by the vertebrae, the spinal cord carries messages to and from the brain and the rest of the body. Cerebellum How the Brain Works: The Facts Visually Explained published in 2020 by DK Media was written by John McCrone. Although the book itself did not win any awards, McCrone is a thirteen-time Australia Publisher of the Year Award winner. I honestly rate this book five stars. Small, almond-shaped structures, an amygdala is located under each half (hemisphere) of the brain. Included in the limbic system, the amygdalae regulate emotion and memory and are associated with the brain’s reward system, stress, and the “fight or flight” response when someone perceives a threat. Hippocampus

Medulla. At the bottom of the brainstem, the medulla is where the brain meets the spinal cord. The medulla is essential to survival. Functions of the medulla regulate many bodily activities, including heart rhythm, breathing, blood flow, and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. The medulla produces reflexive activities such as sneezing, vomiting, coughing and swallowing. MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition.Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.