Divisions of the Brain

• Includes lots of sensory and motor tracts traveling between brain and spinal cord
• Also regulates breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, vomiting, muscle coordination

• Continuation of tracts between brain and spinal cord
• Connections with cerebellum (lots of fascicles that connect two hemispheres of cerebellum)

• Typically caused by damage to ventral pons
• Patient is fully conscious but can't move
• Sometimes voluntary eye blinks and some facial movements are possible

• Auditory and visual attention, movement regulation, pain processing
• Continuation of tracts between telencephalon and spinal cord

• "Black substance" that prevents unwanted movements
• Degenerates in Parkinson's disease

• Web of cell bodies throughout brainstem
• Lots of connections with cerebral cortex (via thalamus) and spinal cord

• Motor control: rhythmic coordination of breathing and swallowing; balance; posture; combines auditory, visual, vestibular information to regulate muscle coordination
• Cardiovascular control
• Pain modulation
• Sleep and consciousness
• Habituation

• Often results from damage to reticular formation
• Tests for brainstem function: breathing pattern, posture, eye movement reflexes, and pupillary reflexes

• 2 hemispheres, vermis in the middle
• Folia and sulci make up cerebellar cortex
• Contains 50% of the neurons in the brain

Connect cerebellum to pons

• Motor coordination
• Motor learning
• Timekeeper

Main components are thalamus and hypothalamus

• Gateway to the cerebral cortex
• Processes almost all sensory information passing to cortex

Memory, emotion, awareness of emotions,

Important for basic functions: thirst, hunger, reproduction, aggression, and circadian rhythms

• Circle of Willis surround hypothalamus
• Hormones, body temperature, glucose levels monitored by hypothalamus

• Lots of neurons project to pituitary gland which controls the release of hormones
• Releases oxytocin and vasopressin into the bloodstream
• Regulates some functions of the brainstem

• SCN has approximately 24 hours of gene expression that regulates sleep, alertness, body temperature, hormone secretion and digestion
• Eyes have pathway to SCN so that light can adjust cycle

• Involved in memory processing (especially smell-associated memories)
• Caused by vitamin B deficiency (chronic alcoholism)
• Results in anterograde memory loss

Auditory

Memory

Visual

• Motor cortex: cell bodies of corticospinal tract
• Premotor cortex: motor planning
• Prefrontal cortex: decision making, planning, social judgment, motivation

Iron rod went through his left frontal lobe = fitful and irreverent

• Somatosensory Cortex: touch, pain, and temperature
• Sensory integration and visual localization

Gustatory cortex (taste), emotion, degree of pain, and effects autonomic nervous system

• Part of limbic system
• Emotional processing, learning and memory

Language deficit due to lesions (damage) to Broca or Wernicke area

Slow speech, can't find correct words

Can't understand written or spoken words

Helps regulate movement

• Lots of connection to/from hypothalamus
• Lots of olfactory input
• Involved in fear perception, emotional memory formation, social behavior and sexual desire

• Just under medial temporal lobe (and lots of connections)
• Involved in memory formation and spatial learning

• Medial temporal lobe cortex and hippocampus removed bilaterally to reduce seizures
• Anterograde memory loss, and some retrograde memory loss

Preferentially destroys hippocampus