What Are You Doing, Brain?
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What Are You Doing, Brain?
  • Yoo Kang Hyun-ji
  • 승인 2007.12.16 23:13
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You can see beautiful sunset with your eyes, and listen to the song of birds via your ears, and your mouth provides the pleasure of eating.  But, in other respects, your eyes, ears and mouth are just a pathway to the brain. Located in the back part of your brain, your occipital lobe is connected to your eyes and it lets you see.  One part of the temporal lobe in the lateral side of your brain receives and analyzes sound from ear, and the other part deep inside it feels taste.  Around the crown of the head (the part of the head where girls wear a headband), parietal lobe can be divided by two major parts, motor area and sensory area. 

Frontal lobe takes charge of higher psychological activities (planning, decision-making, impulse control etc.). Dopamine is a major substance existing in the frontal lobe and a normal amount of it is important in normal functioning of the frontal lobe.  Above all, you need to pay attention to an young 25-year old man who made be attained the worst turning point by damaged frontal lobe after severe accident.  In 1848, an iron bar penetrated the head of 25-year-old Phineas Gage, and the part of it is frontal lobe.  He was a kind, intelligent and a good boy before the mine explosion. 

However, he changed to be seriously impulsive and show frequent mood swings after the affair, though his life had been saved.  People with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are shown to have smaller frontal lobe than normal.  In addition, schizophrenia is concerned with the reduced volume of frontal lobe and parietal lobe than normal.  In case of human, considered the most evolved animal, frontal lobe is well-developed considerably than any other animals.  Furthermore, frontal lobe becomes re-shaped and tuned in adolescence, professionals say that good experience and proper trial and error are vital in many students.    

 

Thank Yourself for Your Prominent Forehead


There is one saying that a child having a prominent forehead is more brilliant.  Actually, it makes sense somewhat owing to prefrontal lobe located in brow.  A resourceful man or a tricky person have well-developed prefrontal lobe, which might be formed by nature or in the course of life time.  In here, you need to keep in mind that your brain could be improved if you use your brain more.

 

Move Your Body quickly And Accurately


You’ll see one small brain, shown independent of a large brain.  This brain is called cerebellum, and it regulates our movement.  Cerebellum and motor area in parietal lobe of the cerebrum can make you do voluntary movement.  If you play piano very well, or you can throw ball farther, you’re sure to have a cerebellum different from others.  Cerebellum remembers movement patterns and makes it function harmoniously.  Do you know that newborns don’t have cerebellum?  This is why babies can’t walk well.  Persistent exercise by parents and many other factors in brain make babies walk.  However, children who have a genetic disorder (usually, this kind of disease has no remedy), affecting the formation of cerebellum couldn’t walk and just crawl until about 6~8ages.  

 

Eraser in My Head


“Chul-soo, I love you.” Su-jin said in Eraser in my head.  She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease which is one kind of dementia. Amnesia in your usual life and dementia are different from each other, though the symptoms seem to be similar.  Dementia is derived from progressive degeneration of neurons (this type of cell plays a major function in your brain), and amnesia happens overloading at the moment.  This is why dementia tends to occur in seniors.  If you are healthy enough well, you don’t need to worry too much about “Where are my glasses?”or “What am I going to do?”

 

You’ve Got Me Feeling Emotion


When you drink a lot, how do you feel and how do you behave?  Perhaps you might reminisce about your old days, be retrospect about your ex-boyfriend, and take another sip. This is because a limbic system wrapping around the brain stem (vital parts for survival of animals, which are composed of diencephalon, midbrain, pons and medulla) in your brain regulates emotion. And if you drink more and more, the limbic system is activated and cerebral cortex (the most outer membrane of cerebrum, which affects rational thought and behavior of human) is paralyzed.  Actually, all mammals have a limbic system, but the other species don’t. 

This is why only mammals show maternal affection to their offspring.  There are also two more interesting facts concerned with the limbic system.  You need to focus two components of the limbic system here.  First of all, look at patients damaged hippocampus.  All the things are new to them, except for people or something in long-term memory.  The patient said, “Hi, how have you been?  Very nice to meet you Hyun-ji” whenever Hyun-ji visited him.  Second, turn your eyes on amygdala beneath the hippocampus.  A mouse with a damaged amygdala can’t show any fear in front of cats. 

 

Albert Einstein Has Smaller Brain than Normal


What do you think about your brain weight?  If you have three or four members in your family, your mother bought one paper bag containing meat when she went a meat shop. Usually, the weight of the two bags is same as one adult’s brain, which 1.4~1.5kg.  Interestingly, it is often thought that the bigger head a person has, the more intelligent he is.  However, Einstein had smaller brain of around 1.23 kg.  The capacity of your natural head doesn’t have a big importance.  As how you use your brain, your brain can change.  There is no limit.  In addition, your brain can’t discern imagination from reality and it behaves as you think or believe.  In your final exam, will you display your brain’s ability? 


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