Introduction to Psychology 1/IPSY101/Brain spinal cord/Overview

Medical diagram of the human brain.

The human brain weighs roughly three and a half pounds, looks like a convoluted mass and contains approximately eighty eight billion neurons. Yet when you reach out to pick up something with your left hand what's really happening is that instructions are being issued by the right side of your frontal lobe. This learning pathway introduces you to the basics of the anatomy of the brain. Once again this learning pathway has a lot of terminology, but as you progress through the next two micro courses what you learn in this pathway will provide a solid foundation for your understanding of intelligence, memory, and every other topic.

Orientation

Rajiv Jhangiani provides a brief orientation to this learning pathway on the brain and the spinal cord.

Video signpost: The Brain and the Spinal Cord

Objectives

By the end of this learning pathway you should be able to:

• Explain the functions of the spinal cord
• Identify the hemispheres and lobes of the brain
• Describe the types of techniques available to clinicians and researchers to image or scan the brain
• Identify the major glands of the endocrine system, the hormones they secrete, and their functional roles