Brain Structures and Their Functions
The nervous system is your body's decision and communication center. The central nervous system (CNS) is made of the brain and the spinal cord and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) is made of nerves. Together they control every part of your daily life, from breathing and blinking to helping you memorize facts for a test. Nerves reach from your brain to your face, ears, eyes, nose, and spinal cord... and from the spinal cord to the rest of your body. Sensory nerves gather information from the environment, send that info to the spinal cord, which then speed the message to the brain. The brain then makes sense of that message and fires off a response. The brain is made of three main parts: the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. The Cerebrum: The cerebrum or cortex is the largest part of the human brain, associated with higher brain function such as thought and action. What do each of these lobes do? Note that the cerebral cortex is highly wrinkled.
How Staying Mentally Fit Can Make a Difference | Optimum Performance Studio
Your brain isn’t a muscle, but you can treat it like one Many people focus on physical fitness, but few know that brain fitness is also something you can work on. In fact, you can exercise your brain as often as you would your arms or abs--and the results can be positive and empowering. It’s helpful to think of your brain as you would a muscle. This is based on your brain’s innate neuroplasticity, or its ability to grow and change in response to new challenges. The science behind brain training Scientists once believed that your mental abilities were fixed in adulthood. The most popular of these brain training products is made by the San Francisco-based Lumosity, which employs a team of in-house neuroscientists with degrees from Stanford and UC Berkeley. Realizing that brains need more sophisticated programs and guidance to grow and change, Lumosity’s scientists work with an experienced team of game designers. Promising studies on the effects of brain training
Brain Waves
The human brain is more complex than your scientists suspect. They are busily mapping where certain functions occur, and how parts of the brain activate in syncronicity. They know that parts of the brain, near the stem, are older than, for instance, the forebrain, and that a human can survive remarkably well with only half a brain, as long as that half is either the right or left, intact. But what your scientists do not know is that beyond the old brain and the new, the subconscious and the conscious, the right and the left halves - there are yet more subdivisions of the human brain. Where brain functions are localized close to the data stores, the chemical paths and links that constitute memory and the potential for thought, these functional mother lodes cannot be mined without the greased lightning that is the communication substrata. Brain waves are but a symptom of the process, whereby the brain, as an organ, hums to itself. All rights reserved: ZetaTalk@ZetaTalk.com
Neurotechnology
Neurotechnology is any technology that has a fundamental influence on how people understand the brain and various aspects of consciousness, thought, and higher order activities in the brain. It also includes technologies that are designed to improve and repair brain function and allow researchers and clinicians to visualize the brain. Background[edit] The field of neurotechnology has been around for nearly half a century but has only reached maturity in the last twenty years. As the field’s depth increases it will potentially allow society to control and harness more of what the brain does and how it influences lifestyles and personalities. Current technologies[edit] Imaging[edit] Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used for scanning the brain for topological and landmark structure in the brain, but can also be used for imaging activation in the brain.[5] While detail about how MRI works is reserved for the actual MRI article, the uses of MRI are far reaching in the study of neuroscience.
neurogenesis
Researchers show that memories reside in specific brain cells
Our fond or fearful memories — that first kiss or a bump in the night — leave memory traces that we may conjure up in the remembrance of things past, complete with time, place and all the sensations of the experience. Neuroscientists call these traces memory engrams. But are engrams conceptual, or are they a physical network of neurons in the brain? In a new MIT study, researchers used optogenetics to show that memories really do reside in very specific brain cells, and that simply activating a tiny fraction of brain cells can recall an entire memory — explaining, for example, how Marcel Proust could recapitulate his childhood from the aroma of a once-beloved madeleine cookie. In that famous surgery, Penfield treated epilepsy patients by scooping out parts of the brain where seizures originated. Fast forward to the introduction, seven years ago, of optogenetics, which can stimulate neurons that are genetically modified to express light-activated proteins. False memory
The First Real Reason We Need To Sleep
We know we need to sleep. We know our brains and bodies work better after sleep. But what we didn't know, until now, was why. Scientists have just reported the first major mechanical reason our brains need to sleep — certain cleaning mechanisms in the brain work better when we shut the brain down. Just like how dump trucks take to the city streets during the pre-dawn hours because there's less traffic, our brain's cleaners also work best when there's less going on. "This study shows that the brain has different functional states when asleep and when awake," study researcher Maiken Nedergaard, of the University of Rochester said in a statement. We've known that our brains consolidate memories during sleep and perform other important functions. We know that sleep has all of these benefits, but until now we didn't know any of the specific changes that bring about these sleep benefits. The paper was published in the journal Science on Oct. 17. Toxic cells J. Sleeping mice Understanding sleep
How The Brain Processes The #Emotions — P...
