The Everything Guide to the Human Brain: Journey Through the Parts of the Brain, Discover How It Works, and Improve Your Brain’s Health PDF
Preview The Everything Guide to the Human Brain: Journey Through the Parts of the Brain, Discover How It Works, and Improve Your Brain’s Health
GUIDE TO THE HUMAN BRAIN Journey through the parts of the brain, discover how it works, and improve your brain’s health Rudolph C. Hatfield, PhD THE EVERYTHING ® GUIDE TO THE HUMAN BRAIN Dear Reader, My vision for this project was to create an easy, straightforward, and nontechnical guide that could explain what we know about how the brain functions. My intent was not to create a textbook, and this book would certainly not be appropriate as a text for a college course, but it might be an appropriate supplement to a textbook for a course in biological psychology. Nonetheless, it is extremely hard not to get a little technical when discussing the brain; it is my hope that the explanations in this book are straightforward. While the book is accurate according to our current understanding of the brain, it is still very general in nature and any single chapter could be expanded to the point of being a full-length book on its own. When writing this book, I decided to use as close to a casual conversational tone as possible. That decision may have resulted in some rambling and other foibles that I exhibit personally, but hopefully the tone of the book allows readers to understand it better. If you read this book and come away with an understanding and appreciation of just how complex the human brain is, then I have done my job. Welcome to the EVERYTHING Series! ® These handy, accessible books give you all you need to tackle a difficult project, gain a new hobby, comprehend a fascinating topic, prepare for an exam, or even brush up on something you learned back in school but have since forgotten. You can choose to read an Everything® book from cover to cover or just pick out the information you want from our four useful boxes: e- questions, e-facts, e-alerts, and e-ssentials. We give you everything you need to know on the subject, but throw in a lot of fun stuff along the way, too. We now have more than 400 Everything® books in print, spanning such wide-ranging categories as weddings, pregnancy, cooking, music instruction, foreign language, crafts, pets, New Age, and so much more. When you’re done reading them all, you can finally say you know Everything®! PUBLISHER Karen Cooper MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING® SERIES Lisa Laing COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert ASSISTANT PRODUCTION EDITOR Mary Beth Dolan ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Brett Palana-Shanahan SENIOR DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Brett Palana-Shanahan EVERYTHING® SERIES COVER DESIGNER Erin Alexander Visit the entire Everything® series at www.everything.com This book is dedicated to my family for putting up with all my antics for all these years. Contents The Top 10 Fascinating Facts About Your Brain Introduction 01 A Quick View The Two Different Nervous Systems How the Central Nervous System Works Mixing Chemicals and Electricity: The Neuron Other Types of Cells in the CNS The Spinal Cord Neuroimaging and Other Ways of Looking at the Brain 02 Dividing Up the Brain North-South-In-Out: Directional Descriptions Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain What’s with All the Wrinkles? Gyri and Sulci Lateralization: Left Brain or Right Brain Cortical and Subcortical Areas Lobes of Fun Cover My Brain Please: The Meninges Holes in Your Brain: The Ventricles Important Brain Structures 03 Can You Believe Your Eyes? The Process of Vision The Principles of Sensory Organization The Process of Seeing What Was That Shape? How You See Motion How You Perceive Color Impaired Vision and Visual Illusions 04 Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Language and Your Brain How You Heard That The Process of Speaking How You Read The Effect of Brain Damage on Language 05 Do You Feel Me? The Sense of Touch How You Obtain Balance: Vestibular Sensation Touch Me: Somatosensation Skin to the Brain What a Pain: Pain Perception Pain Control 06 Chemicals in Your Brain: Taste and Smell How Many Different Tastes Are There? The Brain and Taste That Smell Went Right to Your Brain Olfactory Projections Pheromones 07 You Move Me Muscles and Their Movements Units of Movement The Basal Ganglia The Cerebellum How Your Cortex Moves You Programs in Your Head Movement Disorders 08 Hot, Hungry, and Thirsty: Internal Body States Homeostasis Temperature Regulation Thirst and Your Brain Hunger Eating Disorders 09 Sex Sex Hormones Hormones and Reproductive Behavior in Females and Males Development and Puberty Determinants of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Thinking about Sex Sex Offenders 10 The Sleeping Brain Bodily Rhythms Neural Mechanisms of Circadian Rhythms Stages of Sleep The Dreaming Brain The Functions of Sleep Disorders of Sleep 11 You Have to Grow Up Sometime: The Developing Brain Growth and Brain Differentiation The Old Nature Versus Nurture Debate
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