PSYC 407 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Cerebral Cortex, Axon Terminal, Hindbrain
Document Summary
Hindbrain = body"s vital functions: respiration and heart rate, helps coordinate movement. Midbrain = reflex actions and involved in the control of eye movements and other voluntary movements. Forebrain = largest and most highly developed part of the human brain. Forebrain (cerebral cortex) higher level: most sensory, emotional, and cognitive processing, two specialized hemispheres. Cortex: frontal = thinking and reasoning abilities, memory, parietal = touch recognition, occipital = integrates visual input, temporal = recognition of sights and sounds, long-term memory storage. Communication within the brain (how do neurons talk to each other) Used to think it was electrically (through the movement of other neurons), now we know its chemically and electrically. All or nothing principle (neuron fires or does not fire, no different rates it just does or it doesn"t) action potential: like firing a gun or flushing the toilet it does or doesn"t, no in between. Norepinephrine = wakefulness or arousal via the sympathetic pathways.
