Areas of the Cerebral Cortex

Site of conscious mind; composed of gray matter; allows for self-awareness, sensation, communication, memory, voluntary movement, and understanding

• Primary Motor Cortex
• Premotor Cortex
• Broca's Area
• Frontal Eye Field

Allows conscious control of skilled movements

Controls learned movements of a repetitious or patterned nature

Motor speech area; directs muscles for speech production; present in only one hemisphere

controls voluntary eye movement

Allow conscious awareness of sensation

• Primary Somatosensory Cortex
• Somatosensory Association Cortex
• Visual Areas
• Auditory areas
• Olfactory Cortex
• Gustatory Cortex
• Visceral Sensory Area
• Vestibular (equilibrium) Cortex

• Receives information from general sensory receptors in skin, and proprioceptors in skeletal muscles and joints;
• allows for spatial discrimination

Integration of sensory information to produce understanding of felt object

• a. Primary visual cortex receives sensory information from retina
• b. visual association area uses past visual experiences to interpret visual stimuli

• a. Primary auditory cortex interprets pitch, loudness, and location of sounds
• b. Auditory association area uses past auditory experiences to interpret auditory stimuli

Conscious awareness of odors

Perception of taste stimuli

Conscious perception of visceral sensations

Conscious awareness of balance

Receive input from multiple sensory areas and allows us to give meaning to information received

Involved with intellect, cognition, recall, and personality; also contains contains working (short-term) memory

Recognizing patterns and faces, localizing us and our surroundings in space, and binding different sensory inputs into a coherent whole

Provides emotional impact that makes a scene important to us

Myelinated fibers bundled into tracts, responsible for communication between areas of cortex and lower CNS centers; classified by orientation as commissural, association, or projection

Connect corresponding gray areas of cerebral hemispheres, allowing function as coordinated whole

Connect different parts of the same hemisphere

Tie cortex to the rest of the nervous system and to the body's receptors and effectors

Located inferior to cerebral cortex; influence muscular control, regulate attention, cognition, and slow/stereotyped movements, inhibit antagonistic and unnecessary movements

Contains thalamus, hypothalamus, and epithalamus

• -relay station for information entering cerebral cortex
• -sorts, edits, and relays information
• -mediates sensation, motor activities, cortical arousing, learning, and memory

• -Body's main visceral control center
• -Center for emotional response
• -Regulates body temperature, food intake, water balance, thirst
• -Regulates sleep and wake cycle
• -Controls hormone release by pituitary gland and produces posterior pituitary hormones

Contains Pineal gland, which secretes melatonin; helps regulate sleep-wake cycle