Schema Activator

• Silently read the story of Phineas Gage. In your journals respond to the following question:

What can neuroscientists learn about the brain from this incident?

Brainstem or “old brain”

The Brainstem

• Medulla: – Controls heartbeat and breathing

• Pons:– Coordinates movements

• Crossover point:– Nerves connect right brain to left body and left

brain to right body

Parts of the Old Brain• Thalamus:– Receives info from all senses

except smell– Forwards messages to parts

of the brain that deal with each sense

• Reticular Formation:– Filter for sensory messages

traveling from spinal cord to thalamus

– Enables arousal (cat example)Ex. Sleeping cat with reticular formation stimulated = awake. Cut off connection of reticular formation to rest of brain = coma.

Parts of the Old Brain

• Cerebellum– The “little brain”– Judges time, discriminates sounds, textures, and

controls emotions– Coordinates voluntary movement– Process and stores memories we cannot

consciously recall

Critical Thinking

• All of the functioning in the brainstem or “old brain” occurs without our awareness. Which of the 4 big ideas of psychology does this relate to? Why?

Limbic System

Limbic System• Amygdala– Aggression and fear

• Hypothalamus– Hunger, thirst, body

temperature, sexual behavior– Provides pleasurable rewards

• Hippocampus– Processes conscious memories

Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

Motor Cortex

• Located at back of frontal lobe• Controls all physical movements• Outputs information about movement

• Critical thinking:– What happens when an electrode stimulates the

motor cortex?

• Future of robots?

Sensory Cortex

• Runs parallel to motor cortex, in the front of the parietal lobe

• Processes sensory information• More sensitive areas have higher brain mass

• Critical Thinking:– What happens when an electrode stimulates the

sensory cortex?

Visual and Auditory Cortex

• Visual– In occipital cortex– Just gets information and sends to other places for

processing• Auditory– In temporal cortex

• Critical Thinking:– If a schizophrenic person is having a hallucination,

what would the brain look like?

Association Areas

• What does the rest of the brain do?– Higher level mental functions: judgment, planning,

processing• Association areas are found in all four lobes• Difficult to be mapped because does not have

a specific function

Can we read minds with science?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jc8URRxPIg