Whether you appreciate symphonies or rock music, your brain responds through the activity of these lobes. The last lobes on our tour of the cerebral hemispheres are the temporal lobes, which lie in front of the visual areas and nest under the parietal and frontal lobes. The folds in the brain add to its surface area and therefore increase the amount of gray matter and the quantity of information that can be processed. The cortex is gray because nerves in this area lack the insulation that makes most other parts of the brain appear to be white. When people talk about 'gray matter' in the brain they are talking about this thin rind. Most of the actual information processing in the brain takes place in the cerebral cortex. It is called the cortex, from the Latin word for bark. The Cerebral CortexĬoating the surface of the cerebrum and the cerebellum is a vital layer of tissue the thickness of a stack of two or three dimes. For example, a stroke in the right hemisphere of the brain can leave the left arm and leg paralyzed. When one side of the brain is damaged, the opposite side of the body is affected. This means that the right cerebral hemisphere primarily controls the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere primarily controls the right side. For instance, the ability to form words seems to lie primarily in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere seems to control many abstract reasoning skills.įor some as-yet-unknown reason, nearly all of the signals from the brain to the body and vice-versa cross over on their way to and from the brain. Although the two hemispheres seem to be mirror images of each other, they are different. Despite the split, the two cerebral hemispheres communicate with each other through a thick tract of nerve fibers that lies at the base of this fissure.

The cerebrum is split into two halves (hemispheres) by a deep fissure. It allows you to recognize friends, read books, and play games. It holds your memories, allows you to plan, enables you to imagine and think. The cerebrum sits at the topmost part of the brain and is the source of intellectual activities. When people see pictures of the brain it is usually the cerebrum that they notice.

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