All About the Brain & Nervous System

What Does the Brain Do & How Does It Work?

The brain controls what you think and feel, how you learn and remember, and the way you move and talk. But it also controls things you're less aware of — like the beating of your heart and the digestion of your food.

Your Body's Central Computer

Think of the brain as a central computerthat controls all the body's functions. The rest of the nervous system is like a network that relays messages back and forth from the brain to different parts of the body. It does this via the spinal cord, which runs from the brain down through the back. It contains threadlike nerves that branch out to every organ and body part.

When a message comes into the brain from anywhere in the body, the brain tells the body how to react. For example, when you eat a meal, the nerves in your intestines shoot a message of fullness to your brain. The brain then sends messages back telling your body to digest the food. This enables you to stop eating when you’re full.

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What Are the Parts of the Nervous System?

The nervous system is made up of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system:

• The brain and the spinal cord are the central nervous system.
• The nerves that go through the whole body make up the peripheral nervous system.

The human brain is incredibly compact, weighing just 3 pounds. It has many folds and grooves, though. These give it the added surface area needed for storing the body's important information.

The spinal cord is a long bundle of nerve tissue about 18 inches long and 1/2-inch thick. It extends from the lower part of the brain down through spine. Along the way, nerves branch out to the entire body.

The brain and the spinal cord are protected by bone: the brain by the bones of the skull, and the spinal cord by a set of ring-shaped bones called vertebrae. They're both cushioned by layers of membranes called meninges and a special fluid called cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid helps protect the nerve tissue, keep it healthy, and remove waste products.

What Are the Parts of the Brain?

The brain has three main sections: the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain.

Forebrain

The forebrain is the largest and most complex part of the brain. It consists of the cerebrum — the area with all the folds and grooves typically seen in pictures of the brain — as well as other structures under it.

Cerebrum

The cerebrum contains the information that essentially makes you who you are: your intelligence, memory, personality, emotion, speech, and ability to feel and move. Specific areas of the cerebrum are in charge of processing these different types of information. These are called lobes, and there are four of them: the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes.

The cerebrum has right and left halves, called hemispheres. They're connected in the middle by a band of nerve fibers (the corpus callosum) that lets them communicate. These halves may look like mirror images of each other, but many scientists believe they have different functions:

• The left side is considered the logical, analytical, objective side.
• The right side is thought to be more intuitive, creative, and subjective.

So when you're balancing your checkbook, you're using the left side. When you're listening to music, you're using the right side. It's believed that some people are more "right-brained" or "left-brained" while others are more "whole-brained," meaning they use both halves of their brain to the same degree.

Cortex

The outer layer of the cerebrum is called the cortex (also known as "gray matter"). Information collected by the five senses comes into the brain to the cortex. This information is then directed to other parts of the nervous system for further processing. For example, when you get full at dinner, not only does a message go out to put down your fork and knife, but one also goes to another part of the brain to tell you that you liked the roasted broccoli you just tried.

Thalamus, Hypothalamus & Pituitary Gland

In the inner part of the forebrain sits the thalamus, hypothalamus, and pituitary gland:

• The thalamus carries messages from the sensory organs like the eyes, ears, nose, and fingers to the cortex.
• The hypothalamus controls your pulse, thirst, appetite, sleep patterns, and other processes in your body that happen automatically.
• The hypothalamus also controls the pituitary gland, which makes the hormones that control growth, metabolism, water and mineral balance, sexual maturity, and response to stress.

Midbrain

The midbrain, underneath the middle of the forebrain, acts as a master coordinator for all the messages going in and out of the brain to the spinal cord.

Hindbrain

The hindbrain sits underneath the back end of the cerebrum. It consists of the cerebellum, pons, and medulla. The cerebellum — also called the "little brain" because it looks like a small version of the cerebrum — is responsible for balance, movement, and coordination.

The pons and the medulla, along with the midbrain, are often called the brainstem. The brainstem takes in, sends out, and coordinates the brain's messages. It also controls many of the body's automatic functions, like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, swallowing, digestion, and blinking.

How Does the Nervous System Work?

The basic workings of the nervous system depend a lot on tiny cells called neurons. The brain has billions of them, and they have many specialized jobs. For example, sensory neurons send information from the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin to the brain. Motor neurons carry messages away from the brain to the rest of the body.

All neurons relay information to each other through a complex electrochemical process, making connections that affect the way you think, learn, move, and behave.

Intelligence, Learning & Memory

As you grow and learn, messages travel from one neuron to another over and over, creating connections or pathways, in the brain. It's why driving takes so much concentration when someone first learns, but later it is second nature. The pathway became established.

In young kids, the brain is highly adaptable. In fact, when one part of a young child's brain is injured, another part often can learn to take over some of the lost function. But as you age, the brain has to work harder to make new neural pathways, making it tougher to master new tasks or change set behavior patterns. Around ages 11–12, the brain can strongly lock in habits, which is why trying things like smoking or drinking can quickly become addictive and hard to change later.

Decision-making skills also take time to develop, so kids may not always make good choices. Some parts of the brain don’t fully mature until people are in their 20s. Many scientists believe it's important to keep challenging it to learn new things and make new connections — it helps keeps the brain active over the course of a lifetime.

Memory

Memory is another complex function of the brain. The things you've done, learned, and seen are first processed in the cortex. Then, if you sense that this information is important enough to remember permanently, it's passed inward to other regions of the brain (such as the hippocampus and amygdala) for long-term storage and retrieval. As these messages travel through the brain, they too create pathways that serve as the basis of memory.

Movement

Different parts of the cerebrum move different body parts. The left side of the brain controls the movements of the right side of the body, and the right side of the brain controls the movements of the left side of the body. When you press your car's accelerator with your right foot, for example, it's the left side of your brain that sends the message allowing you to do it.

Basic Body Functions

A part of the peripheral nervous system called the autonomic nervous system controls many of the body processes you almost never need to think about, like breathing, digestion, sweating, and shivering. The autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for sudden stress, like if you witness a car accident. When something frightening happens, the sympathetic nervous system makes the heart beat faster so that it sends blood quickly to the different body parts that might need it. It also causes the adrenal glands at the top of the kidneys to release adrenaline, a hormone that helps give extra power to the muscles for a quick getaway. This process is known as the body's "fight or flight" response.

The parasympathetic nervous system does the opposite: It prepares the body for rest. It also helps the digestive tract move along so our bodies can efficiently take in nutrients from the food we eat.

The Senses

• Sight. Sight probably tells us more about the world than any other sense. Light entering the eye forms an upside-down image on the retina. The retina transforms the light into nerve signals for the brain. The brain then turns the image right-side up and tells you what you're seeing.
• Hearing. Every sound you hear is the result of sound waves entering your ears and making your eardrums vibrate. These vibrations then move along the tiny bones of the middle ear and turn into nerve signals. The cortex then processes these signals, telling you what you're hearing.
• Taste. The tongue contains small groups of sensory cells called taste buds that react to chemicals in foods. Taste buds react to sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory. The taste buds send messages to the areas in the cortex responsible for processing taste.
• Smell. Olfactory cells in the mucous membranes lining each nostril react to chemicals you breathe in and send messages along specific nerves to the brain.
• Touch. The skin contains millions of sensory receptors that gather information related to touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and send it to the brain for processing and reaction.