Your Brain: An overview of brain function

The brain is fascinating, to say the least. We take for granted the many complicated functions that it performs every second of every day – it is pure natural tech created to fit right inside your skull, amazing!

Here’s an illustrated overview of the cool things it does…and this is just the tip of the iceberg! Let’s take this journey from the Frontal Lobe clockwise around:

Brain fin-May 4rev4

Frontal Lobe (1): this is one of 4 major lobes that make up the cerebral cortex (we’ll get to the other 3 later). What is the cerebral cortex you ask? It’s the brain’s outer layer, the gray matter, like a film over the entire brain. Your frontal lobe has a lot to do with your decision making and emotion modification, to adjust to social situations. It’s the part of your brain that makes a choice. Your frontal lobe is the area of the brain that notices that car behind you coming up awfully fast and furious, it sees a car accident in your future. It will make the call to swerve out of the path and into the ditch to deflect the accident. It also makes the call to get out of the car and give the heck, or calmly get back on the road and drive on.

Motor: the ‘motor’ of the frontal lobe, it’s the executor of movement. The motor is where nerve pulses originate that initiate the voluntary movement of self-control, or lack thereof.

Cerebrum: this is the largest part of the brain, in other words, it’s the image in your brain that you get when you hear the word ‘brain’. It deals in conscious thought and the coordination of voluntary action.

Sensory: this area receives and processes our sense of smell, taste, hearing, seeing, touch and puts it all together to formulate a perception of what is going on around us.

Parietal Lobe (2): taste, temperature and touch

Fornix:

Occipital Lobe: 

Cerebellum:

Hippocampus:

Amygdala:

Hypothalamus:

Olfactory Bulbs:

Temporal Lobe (4): not shown

Prefrontal Cortex:

Corpus Collosum:

Cingulate Gyrus:

http://brainmadesimple.com/parietal-lobe.html

 

About

Angie Pattengale is co-owner and chief executive officer of the National Federation of Professional Trainers, where she works behind the scenes on relationship-building, advertising, policies and procedures, test development and delivery, and growing the business. She joined her father, NFPT founder Ron Clark, at the company in 1994.