Showing posts with label basis of neuroscience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basis of neuroscience. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Limbic Lobe

As I have already talked about the basics parts of our brain, this part named Limbic Lobe is located inside the Cerebrum.

The upper diagram the shows the Limbic Lobe also known as Limbic System. In this article, I will talk about several functions of their parts.

The first part I would like to talk about is Amygdala. The Amygdala is a part in our brain that is mostly involved in processing emotions. Mostly the emotions of fear that alert us. For Example, An experiment was performed on a mouse,in that experiment, the researchers surgically stopped Amygdala from working. The researchers then putted the mouse in the cage of  a hungry cat, and they found that the mouse got into the hands of the cat very easily and the mouse was still not afraid, that is a sign that the Amygdala plays an important role in processing the emotion of fear.

Now let's talk about Hippocampus, Hippocampus is a part in our brain that is involved in making memory. I have already talked about it in my previous post and you can read that post for getting information about it.

Next I will talk about The Thalamas. The Thalamas is like a gateway for the Cortex, very information that wants to visit the Cortex must first pass through here to be able to go to the Cortex. The Cortex here might even cancel the information and it might not allow the information to reach the Cortex. For Example, when you are in your school and your teacher teaches you a very important lesson, you might not hear the tick tick sound of the clock, this is because the Thalamas after sometime does not allow the sound to reach the Cortex because the Cortex is already involved in understanding the lesson.

The Cingulate Gyrus is the part of our brain that processes the autonomic nervous system that is this part of our brain adjusts the Blood Pressure, Pupil Size, Heart Rate and other things which are not in our control.

Hypothalamas and Pituitary Gland.
The Hypothalamas is located just below the Thalamas and is mostly involved in maintaining the internal environment of our body by increasing or decreasing the feeling of Hunger, Thirst etc. It also affects the rate of our growth by getting a control over the Pituitary Gland. The Pituitary Gland secretes the Growth Hormone and it only sends the Growth Hormone when it gets the signal from Hypothalamas.

Next, I would like to talk about Corpus Callosum, This part of our brain helps both the hemispheres of our brain to contact with each other. There are two hemispheres of our brain, they are left and right hemisphere and this both contact each other with the help of Corpus Callosum.

The Limbic Lobe can be said as the heart of our brain. We cannot have emotions without it.

This is all I wanted to include in this article.

Thanks for reading.

Saturday, 12 May 2012

Basics Of Neuroscience

Hello Friends!!!!!!!
Today, in this article, I would be writing about the basis of Neuroscience.

First of all, I would like to tell you what is Neuroscience?

Neuroscience is a branch or part of science that  mostly deals with how our brain works. And this is one of the part of science that can tell you that your brain is not just a simple brain but it is really more complex than even a super computer. It's complexity is really hard to solve and study. So, in this article, I will only write about some of the basics of Neuroscience and also I recommend you to read my article which deals with the Neuromatrix of pain, i.e., how is pain caused and it tells about the parts of our brain involved in discovering pain.

So, let me first start with the basis of brain anatomy. Scientists have divided the brain into three parts in common. They are:

  1. Cerebellum
  2. Cerebrum
  3. And Medulla
First I would like to talk about Cerebrum. The Cerebrum is the part of our brain that almost processes all the data that comes in our brain through the spinal cord or all the information that comes into our brain. The image below shows the Cerebrum and it's four parts:
Human Brain

The cerebrum is again divided into four parts:
  1. Frontal Lobe
  2. Parietal Lobe
  3. Occipital Lobe
  4. And Temporal Lobe
First let me talk about the Frontal Lobe, this part of our(Human) brain is basically involved in planning and reasoning and all the other types of higher level functions that only human's can perform. More specifically, The Prefrontal Cortex is the part of our brain that is involved in higher order functions. And this part part, i.e., The Prefrontal Cortex, is only found in the human brain, that means that it is the special part that allowed us to perform the functions that animals cannot do.
Prefrontal Cortex
The image above shows the Prefrontal Cortex in green color. 

Now moving towards the other part of our brain, Parietal Lobe.

This part of our brain is mostly involved in the processing of movements. This part of our brain also helps us to keep an record of where our body parts are located in space, for example, close your eyes for some time and after you close your eyes, you still know where your body parts are or where you leg is right now, where you fingers are right now, so this is the part that makes that thing possible, or in other words, it contains a type of blueprint of all your body parts. 

This part also works in coordination with your occipital lobe which is involved in processing visual signals so that you are able to pick up a pencil when you see it.(discussed later)

As I have already said, that the Occipital Lobe is involved in processing visual signals. But for the people whoa re blind from birth may also use this part of their brain to process the auditory signals, it is usually found that the people that are blind from birth, have a greater sense of audio then any other normal person, the reason behind this is that this people usually train their Occipital Lobe to process audio.

Next comes our Temporal Lobe, the Temporal Lobe is a part in our brain which is involved in processing audio signals. It also contains the part of our brain, known as Hippocampus(HI-PO-KAM-PUS), that is involved in processing the memory portion, that is, the thing that we need to remember are processed here and are then sent to long term memory. It is like the gateway of the memory to be remembered. But one thing should be noticed that it only makes us remember the things but it does not store them, it sends that "thing" to the respective Lobe or Cortex it belongs to. For Example, the memory of audio will be sent to the Temporal Lobe, the memory of vision will be sent to the Occipital Lobe etc. Afterwards, this all the memories can be combined to form a image of what happened in the past or the thing we need to remember.
Hippocampus.

The Occipital Lobe also sends the signals to the Temporal Lobe and Parietal Lobe, for recognizing and picking up an object. The Temporal Lobe recognizes the object and the Parietal Lobe plans our actions to pick up the object.

Now we come to the part of Cerebellum, the Cerebellum is usually involved in coordinating motor functions, i.e., the functions of movement. The movement signal after getting processed in the Parietal Lobe, it reaches the Cerebellum. The Cerebellum also controls reflex functions. For Example, if you try to hit a trained person in self defense techniques, such as Bear Grylls, you will find that they have taken the decision to attack you in the correct manner in less than a second, the reason behind that is that the signal did not go to the Cerebrum, instead the Cerebellum used the neural connections in it to perform that action. And also you can modify the neural connections in the Cerebellum by practicing regularly.

Last comes our Spinal Cord, it is a part that takes signals from our brain to the body and also from the body to our brain.

I cannot write more than that right now as I am tired, sorry for any mistakes in this article.

Thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!