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THE BRAIN and BEHAVIOUR - Coggle Diagram
THE BRAIN and BEHAVIOUR
The nervous system
Central system consisting of the brain and the spinal cord. The peripheral system divided into the somatic system (whih is responsibel for sensory and motor functions) and the autonomic system (which directs the activity of the body´s internal organs and glands)
The autonomic system consists of sympathetic and prasympathetic divisions. The sympathetic system has an arousal function and tends to act as a unit. The prasympathic system slows down body processes and is more specific in its actions. Togehterm tehy maintain a statew of homeostasis or internal balance
The spinal cord contains sensory neurons and motor neurons. Interneurons inside the spinal cord serve a connective function between the two. Simple stimulus-response sequences can occurs as spinal reflexes
The brain and spinal cord cpontain white and grey matter. Grey matter is where cells connect, and compromises the cell bodies and synapses of action. White matter is where signals are transmitted between different parts of the nervous system within the axons of neurons
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The hierarchical brain
Major structures within the hindbrain include the medulla, which monitors and cpontrols vital body functions, the pons, which contains important groups of sensory and motor neurons, and the cerebellum, whcih is concerned with motor-co-ordination
The reticular formation, located in the midbrain, plays a vital role in consciousness, attention and sleep. Activity of the ascending reticular formations excites higher areas of the brain and prepares them to respons to stimulation, The descnding reticular formation acts as a gate, determining whcih stimuli enter into consciousness
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The thalamus acts as a switchboard through which impulses originating in sense organs are routed to the appropriated sensory-projection area. The hypothalamus plays a major role in many aspects of motivational and emotional behaviour. The limbic system seems to be responsible for organizing the behaviours involved in motivation and emotion
The cerebral cortex is divided into frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes. Some areas receive sensory input, some control motor functions and other (teh associative cortex) are involved in higher mental processes. The forntal lobes are particularly important in such executive functions as planning, voulntary behaviour and self-awareness
The left hemisphere commands language and mathematical abilities, shereas right hempisphere has well-developed spatial abilities but a genewrally limited ability to communicate through speech. Positive emotions are linked to relatively greater left-hempisphere activations and negative emotison to realtively greater right-hempisphere involvement. Despite hempisphere localization, however, most behaviour involves interactions between both hempispheres; the brain normally operates as a highly integrated system
Plasticity
neural plasticity refers to the ability of neurons to change in structure and function. Environmental factors, particulalry early in life, have notable effects on brain development. There are often periods during which environmental fators have their greatest (or only) effedts on plasticity
A person´s abiity to recover from brain damage depends on several factors. Other things being equal, recovery is greates early in life and declines with age..
When neurons diem surviving neurons can later their structure and functions to recover the ability to send and receive nerve ipulses. Neurons can also increase the amount of neurotransmitters they release. Recent findings suggest that the brains of mature primates and humans are capable of procuding new neurons. Current advances in treatment include experiments on neurogenesis and the injection of neural stem cells into the brain,.
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NEURONS
Each neuron has dendrites, which receieves nerve impulses from other neurons, which controls the vital processes of the call; and an axonm which conducts nerve impulses to adjacent neurons, muscles and glands
The nerve impulse, or action potential, is a brief reversal in the electrical potential of the cell membrande form negative to positive as sodium ions from the surrounding field flow into the cell thorught sodium ion channels. The actions potential obeys the all-or-none law, firing completely or not at all. The myeling increaes the sepeed of neural transmission