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Overview

What parts of the brain are involved in addition and recognition? Scientists use modern scanning technologies to figure that out. They don’t need to cut open your skull or mess up your hair, they just make you lie down in a tube-shaped scanner, switch it on, and ask you to do some tests as it runs. Then the computer translates those results into colorful images that look like snapshots of the brain at work.

Neuroscience has evolved over the years. In fact, it didn’t have to start from scratch because physicians had observed brain-damaged patients and tied their bizarre behavior to the cerebral structures that were damaged. These people are portrayed in historic case studies, which will be discussed later on. The key points will help you understand how your own brains work as well as those of others who have suffered damage to certain parts of their brains due to illness or injury.

You will also learn about people who can see with their ears, liars who feel certain that they were dishonest because of lack of a vitamin deficiency and the relationship between one’s hand and its desire to divorce.

Big Idea #1: Much of our knowledge about the brain comes from studying the victims of brain damage.

Throughout most of the history of neuroscience, scientists could not see what happens in people’s heads without drilling a hole into their skulls. That is why pioneers learned about the brain by studying individuals with brain damage. People who have brain disorders often perceive the world oddly or behave in unusual ways, for example Woodrow Wilson lost his ability to notice things on his left after he suffered a stroke in 1919.

Early neuroscientists often conducted research by examining the brains of people after they died. They found that damage to certain parts of the brain caused unusual behavior, which led them to conclude what those regions were responsible for while someone was alive.

The first breakthrough in this field was the famous 1559 autopsy of King Henri II of France. He had suffered a severe blow to the forehead during a joust, and he experienced hallucinations and painful headaches until he died.

After the king died, a surgeon named Ambroise Parè and an anatomist named Andreas Vesalius performed an autopsy on his head. They uncovered that there was no damage to the skull but swelling of tissue at the back of his brain caused by decay.

Andreas and Vesalius’s findings gave credibility to the use of autopsies as a scientific tool. We owe much of our knowledge about the human brain to unfortunate individuals like King Henri, who died and whose body was used for studies by scientists in order to learn more about brains.

Big Idea #2: The human brain is made up of three parts: the lower brain, the middle brain and the cortex.

A human brain might seem like nothing more than a gray lump to the untrained eye, but it is highly organized – down to microscopic level. Let’s look at it in detail.

The lower brain controls the basic functions of your body like breathing, sleeping and circulation. It’s also called the reptilian brain because it stretches from the top of your spinal cord up to your cerebellum.

The cerebellum is a small brain attached to the back of your main one. It’s made up of two parts, which are called the pons and medulla. These areas help you coordinate your body movements.

The middle brain is at the center of the head and connects to everything else in your body. It relays information around your body and mind, which are divided into left and right halves called hemispheres. A set of fibers connecting these two parts is called the corpus callosum. The middle brain contains a system known as the limbic system that plays an important role in emotions and memory.