-
Spinal Cord
General Function: simple relexes
- Specific Function: Controls simple stretch and tendon relexes
- Controls primitive processes such as walking, urination, and sex organ function
-
Medulla
General Function: involuntary functions
- Specific Function: Controls autonomic processese such as blood pressure, blood flow, heart rate, respiratory rate, swallowing, vomiting
- Controls reflex reactions such as coughing or sneezing
- relays sensory information to the cerebellum and thalamus
-
Pons
General Function: Relay station and balance
- Specific Function: controls antigravity posture and balance
- Connects the spinal cord and medulla with upper regions of the brain
- Relays information to the cerebellum and thalamus
-
Cerebellum
General Function: movement coordination
- Specific Function: Integrating center
- Coordination of complex movement, balance and posture, muscle tone, spatial equilibrium
-
Midbrain
General Function: Eye movement
- Specific Function: Integration of visual and auditory information
- Visual and auditory relexes
- Wakefulness and consciousness
- Coordinates information on posture and muscle tone
-
Thalamus
General Function: integrating center and relay station
- Specific Function: Relay center for somatic (conscious) sensation
- Relays information between the spinal cord and the cerebral cortex
-
Hypothalamus
General Function: Homeostasis and behavior
- Specific Function: Controls homeostatic functions (such as temperature regulation, fluid balance, appetite) through both neural and hormonal regulation
- Controls primitive emotions such as anger, rage, and sex drive
- Controls the pituitary gland
-
Basal nuclei
General Function: Movement
- Specific Function: Regulate body movement and muscle tone
- Coordination of learned movement patterns
- General pattern of rhythm movements (such as controlling the cycle of arm and leg movements when walking)
- Subconscious adjustments of conscious movements
-
Limbic system
General Function: emotion, memory, and learning
- Specific Function: Controls emotional states
- Links conscious and unconscious portions of the brain
- Helps with memory storage and retrieval
-
Cerebral cortex
General Function: Perception, skeletal muscle movement, integration center
- Specific Function: Divided into four lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital) with specialized subfunctions
- Conscious through processes and planning, awareness and sensation
- Intellectual function (intelligence, learning, reading, communication)
- Abstract thought and reasoning
- Memory storage and retrieval
- Initiation and coordination of voluntary movement
- Complex motor patterns
-
Corpus callosum
General Function: Connection
Specific Function: connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres
|
|