chapter6

How the Nervous system works
The nervous system is never at rest. There is always a job for it to do. Even when you are sleeping the nervous system is busy regulating your body functions. The nervous system controls your emotions, movements thinking, and behavior.

Neurons
Messages to and from the brain travel along the nerves, which are strings of long, thin cells called neurons. Chemicalelectrial signals travel down the neurons much as flame travel along a firecracker fuse. The main difference is that the neurons can "burn" over and over again, hundreds of times a minute.

Voluntary and Involuntary Activities
Some of the actions that your body makes in response to impulses from the nerves are volentary acts, such as lifting your hand to turn a page. Others are involentary acts such as changes in the heartbeat, in the blood pressure, or in the size of the pupils.

Studying The Brain
The brain is composed of three parts the hindbrain,midbrain,forebrain. Hindbrain:Located at the rear base of the skull,is involved in the most basic processes of life. Midbrain:Is the small part of the brain above the pons that integreates sensery information and relays it upward. Forebrain:Covering the brains central core, includes the//thalamus// which intergrates sensory input.

Lobes of the brain
The cerebrum is really two hemispheres, or two sides. The cerebral hemispheres is connected by a band of fibers called the //corpus callosum//. Occpitial lobe is where the visual signals are processed.You will have vision problems if you damage this area.

How Psychologists Study The Brain
Among the methods they use to explore the brain are recording, stimulating, lesioning, and imaging.

Recording
Electrodes are wires that can be inserted into the brain to record electrical activity in the brain. The electrical activity of the brain can be recorded by with an electroencephalograph.

Stimulation
Electrodes may be used to set off the firing of neurons as to record it.

Lessons
Scientists sometimes create lesions by cutting or destroying part of an animal's brain.

The Endocrine system
Pituitary Gland is located near the midbrain secretes a large number of hormones, many of which control the output of hormones. What do these hormone messages tell the body to do? They carry messages to orgins that store nutrients.

Hormones
Chemical substances that carry messages through the body in blood.

Pituitary Gland
The center of control of the endocrine system that secretes a large number of hormones.