Notes
Slide Show
Outline
1
The Brain:
How does it work?
  • Carla Piper, Ed. D.
2
Facts about the Brain
  • Weighs approximately 3 pounds
    • Mostly water - 78%
    • Fat - 10%
    • Protein - 8%
  • Soft enough to cut with a butter knife
  • Grapefruit-sized organ
  • Outside of the brain
    • Convolutions or folds
    • Wrinkles are part of the cerebral cortex
    • Folds allow maximum surface area
3
The Nervous System
  • Makes up critical portion of the nervous system
  • Nerve cells connected by nearly 1 million miles of nerve fibers
  • Has the largest area of uncommitted cortex of any species giving humans flexibility for learning.
  • Brain consumes about 20% of the body's energy .
  • The Brain uses about 1/5 of the body's oxygen.
  • The Brain gets about 8 gallons of blood each hour (supplying nutrients like glucose, protein, trace elements, and oxygen).
  • Brain needs 8-12 glasses of water a day for optimal functioning.
4
Neuroscience
  • Technology paved the way for understanding how bring works.
  • Enabled researchers to understand and see inside the brain.
  • Brain scanners developed - Brain Imaging Technology
    • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
    • Positron Emission Tomography (PET) – Radioactive glucose used to determine activity in different parts of the brain
    • Electroencephalography (EEG) – Electrodes give us readings about electrical output of the brain
5
Two Cerebral Hemispheres 
Left and Right
6
Left and Right Hemispheres
7
The Lobes
  • Frontal Lobe
    • Area around your forehead
    • Involved in purposeful acts like judgment, creativity, problem solving, and planning.
  • Parietal Lobe
    • Top back area of the brain
    • Processes higher sensory and language functions
  • Temporal Lobe
    • Left and right side above and around the ears
    • Primarily responsible for hearing, memory, meaning, and language.
    • Some overlap in functions of the lobes.
  • Occipital Lobe
    • Back of the brain
    • Primarily responsible for vision
8
Video of Brain Construction
  • Layered construction of a sequence of 3-D anatomical probability maps.
  • Order:
    • Thalamus.
    • Putamen, Caudate, and Insula
    • Cerebellum
    • Temporal lobes
    • Occipital lobes
    • Parietal lobes
    • Frontal lobes
9
Learning Changes the Brain
10
Brain Activity by Age 
Stages of Development Through Sensory Experiences in the First Year
11
The Resting Brain
  • PET Scans Show Brain Function
  • Four Different Slices of the Same Brain
  • Mapping of Cerebral Function
  • Resting Brain Shows No “hotspots”
12
Auditory Activity
  • Subject listened to some music.
  • Increased activity in the PET image containing the auditory cortex.
  • Nonverbal stimuli (music) predominantly activates the nondominant (right) hemisphere.
  • Simultaneous stimulation with language and music would cause a more bilateral activation of the auditory cortex.
13
Visual Activity
  • Subject exposed to visual stimulation consisting of both pattern and color.
  • Increased activity in the stimulated brain PET image (arrowhead).
  • Region of increased activity corresponds to the primary visual cortex.
14
Thinking Activity
  • Increased activity in the stimulated brain PET image (arrowhead).
  • Region of increased activity corresponds to the frontal cortex.
15
Memory Activity
  • Subject required to remember an image for later recall.
  • Increased activity in the stimulated brain PET image (arrowhead) is the hippocampal formation.
  • Region of the brain implicated in learning and memory.
  • Hypocampus integrates sensory information along with amygdala
16
Motor or Kinesthetic Activity
  • Motor stimulation of the brain
  • Subject to hop up and down on his right foot.
  • Motor task of a movement of the right foot caused:
    • Cortical metabolic activation of the left motor strip (horizontal arrowhead)
    • Caused supplementary motor cortex (vertical arrow, top).
17
Thalamus
  • The thalamus is often thought of as the individual consciousness - the "You"
  • Narrow bands across the top middle of the brain
    • Sensory Cortex - Monitors skin receptors
    • Motor Cortex - Needed for Movement
  • Cerebellum
    • Latin for "the little brain"
    • Back lower area of the brain
    • Responsible for balance, posture, motor movement, and some areas of cognition
    • Thought to include the essential long-term memory traces for motor learning.
18
The Limbic System
Emotional Center
  • Amygdala controls major affective activities like friendship, love and affection, on the expression of mood and, mainly, on fear, rage and aggression.
  • Hippocampus is particularly involved with memory phenomena, specially with the formation of long-term memory.
  • Thalamus makes connections
  • Hypothalamus - symptomatic manifestations and expression of emotions
  • Brain Stem – emotional reflex reactions


19
Two Kinds of Brain Cells
  • Glia - (Greek word meaning glue)
    • 90% of the brain cells
    • Less known about glia cells
    • No cell body
    • Remove dead brain cells and give structural support
  • Neurons (Greek word meaning bowstring)
    • 100 billion neurons in human brain
    • Neurons essential to performing the brain's work
    • Consist of a compact cell body, dendrites, and axons

20
Neurons
  • Neurons (brain cells) make connections between different parts of the brain.
  • Information is carried inside a neuron by electrical pulses and transmitted across the synaptic gap from one neuron to another by chemicals called neurotransmitters.
  • Learning is a critical function of neurons.
21
Dendrites and Axons
  • Dendritic branching helps make connections between cells.
  • As cells connect with other cells, synapses occurs.
  • New synapses appear after learning.
  • Repeating earlier learning makes neural pathways more efficient through myelination (fatty substances formed around axons)
  • Brain Songs - http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/songs.html
22
Synaptic Connectivity
  • Relative glucose metabolic rate related to complexity of the dendritic structure of cortical neurons.
  • Increase in capillary density in the human frontal cortex during the same period.
  • Decrease in glucose metabolic rate in the adult reflects a "pruning" of excessive neuronal connectivity and a selective stabilization of the remaining neuronal connections.
23
Secret Life of the Brain
  • PBS Web - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/index.html


24
Speech
  • Broca’s Area:
  • In the left frontal lobe
  • Controls production of speech sounds
  • Lies close to motor areas
  • Wernicke’s Area:
  • Left temporal lobe
  • Gets meaning from words and sentences
  • Formulates ideas into speech
25
The Complex Brain
26
Auditory, Kinesthetic, Visual
27
The Five Senses
28
Audition (Hearing)
  • Sound waves enter your ear canal and hit your ear drum.
  • This makes the ear drum vibrate.
  • Three tiny bones in your middle ear link the vibrating ear drum with the inner part of your ear.
  • The last of these bones is connected to a tiny bone structure that looks a bit like a snail shell, but is about the size of a pea. It is called the cochlea (pronounced cock-lee-ah).
  • Your cochlea is filled with a liquid that carries the vibrations to thousands of tiny hair cells.
  • Each cell is tuned to a particular sound (or frequency).
  • As these little hair cells move in the fluid, they carry a message to the nerve that is connected to your brain, which turns this signal into what you hear.
29
Language and Images of the Mind
30
Language Processing
  • Unpracticed Task
    • Yellow and red regions are "hotter – higher cell activity
    • Patient was unpracticed at the language learning task.
    • The highest brain activities in the temporal lobe responsible for the hearing perception
    • Prefrontal cortex responsible for understanding language.
  • Practiced Task
    • Same individual has now learned the language task and is spelling out.
    • Concentrated in the Broca area of the cortex which is responsible for the motor control of voice
    • Real-time image of brain function.
31
Music and the Brain
  • Familiar music activates Broca's area (left hemisphere)
  • Rhythm notes are activated in Broca's area and the cerebellum
  • Harmony activates the left side of the brain more than the right in the inferior temporal cortex.
  • Timbre activated the right hemisphere (the only musical element that did)
  • Pitch activated an area on the left back of the brain - the precuneus.
  • Melody activated both sides of the brain.
  • Composite listening - Left and Right Hemisphere - Auditory Cortex
  • Understanding lyrics - Wernicke's Area
32
Mind’s Eye to Emotion’s Seat
  • "Music goes much deeper than that—below the outer layers of the auditory and visual cortex to the limbic system, which controls our emotions. The emotions generated there produce a number of well-known physiological responses. Sadness, for instance, automatically causes pulse to slow, blood pressure to rise, a drop in the skin's conductivity and a rise in temperature. Fear increases heart rate; happiness makes you breathe faster.”
33
Emotional Impact of Music
  • Music modulates our body's stress responses.
  • Music can decrease or increase stress levels.
  • Music is a strong and powerful mood enhancer.
  • Music strengthens our immune systems and enhances wellness.
  • Sounds connect us to our sympathetic and parasympathetic (stress/distress response) nervous systems.
  • Music impacts blood flow in the body.
34
Brainwaves
35
Emotional Impact of Music
  • Evidence exists that music can be helpful in healing.
  • Possible Explanation - Music can help the body get back in synch since the body emits and responds to sounds and vibrations.
  • Natural state of rest - 8 cycles per second (8 cps) - corresponding with alpha brainwave state
  • Every function in the body has a modifiable, basic rhythmic pattern and vibratory rate that impacts our nerves through sound.
  • Body is maintained through rhythmic vibration.
  • Changes in harmonic patterns, tonal sequences, rhythmic patterns might affect physical and mental health.
36
The Controversial Mozart Effect
  • The Mind Institute
    • http://www.mindinst.org/MIND3/indexresearchers.html
    • 1993 - College students who listened to the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448)
    • Short-term subsequent enhancement of their spatial-temporal (ST) reasoning (making a mental image and thinking ahead in space and time, as in chess, music or math).
    • 1997 - 3 year-olds given piano keyboard training for six months showed long-term ST reasoning enhancement.
  • The Mozart Effect Resource http://www.mozarteffect.com/learn/read.html
  • Results of Research
    • Evidence has been reported in 26 of 27 studies that were done to duplicate the effect.
    • Effect is cross-species (occurs in rats brains as well),
    • Music impacts neural firing patterns in epileptics as demonstrated in PET scans (improved spatial reasoning)
    • Effect present in preschoolers and not dependant on musical talent
    • EEG Studies demonstrated enhanced synchronization of neuronal firing activity of the right frontal and left temporal-parietal areas compared to students listening to a story.
37
Japanese Music Demonstration
  • Mo Kin – Japanese 3 year old musician http://robpongi.com/pages/comboMOKINHI.html
38
Websites
  • Secret Life of the Brain (PBS) - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/index.html
  • Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling - http://www.hhmi.org/senses/
  • Neuroscience for Kids - http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html
  • The Musical Brain - http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/music.html
  • Kidshealth - http://kidshealth.org/kid/
  • International Foundation for Music Research - http://www.music-research.org/
  • Brain and Emotions Research - http://www.news.wisc.edu/packages/emotion/
  • Songs for Teaching - Using Music to Promote Learning - http://www.songsforteaching.com/index.html
  • NIEHS Kids' Pages - http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/music.htm
39
Music Research Websites