Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Neurogenesis is the process in which new neural stem cells are created. In the past, it was thought that this process ends in childhood. New studies have proven this wrong, and in fact neurogenesis continues to occur throughout adulthood. It is now hypothesized to play to be the main component in neural plasticity, our ability to learn, and memorize. There are many factors that can affect neurogenesis, both genetic and environmental. Cruz and Nixon (2003) sought to see what effects, if any, that…

Vocal and singing breathing exercises hold the key to effective sound quality and proper pitching, along with developing the correct singing posture. When we breathe, we tend to take in air and release it in a burst, as quickly as possible. This holds true for 99% people but singing requires you to breathe in a different manner. As you move up the learning curve, you will also begin understanding how important it is to control your breath especially while singing soprano or tenor. Proper…

Our sensorimotor has many parts to function and manipulate what we want our body part to do. We simply must think and react to what are next move and in rapid millisecond either our hand or leg moves. As this occurs, our primary somatosensory cortex that’s located in our central sulcus has a full chart of information lined up for our function to travel all the way to our spinal cord and make a movement. As Agnosia damages the path of any function of either of the temporal lobe or cerebellum, it…

Hypotheses of Mood Disorders Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK28257/ 7) NOT DONE 8) The pyramidal system is a direct pathways for all motor impulses originating at the cortex of the brain. This pathway provides voluntary muscles of the neck, head and limbs. Neurons are created in the primary motor cortex. The pyramidal system has two tracts the corticospinal and to corticobulbar. The corticospinal is at the inferior level of the medulla. Lateral corticospinal tracts exert…

Have you ever wondered how the brain works or how it is connected? Outside the brain there appears to be a handful of pink and gray muscles. However, as you enter the human brain, it reveals an extremely complex circuit, connecting you with the rest of your body. The brain contains almost 100,000 miles of blood vessels and billions of cells. It is the consummate library of information, remembering data and processing it as quickly as 11 million bits per second (The Human Brain). The brain is a…

One of the other types of stress is Episodic Acute Stress. When acute stress starts to happen, more often it is called episodic acute stress. People who always seem to have a continuous crisis in their life seem to have episodic acute stress. People that tend suffer from this always seem to be in a rush, they take too much on and tend not to be able to organize themselves to deal with demands and pressures. People who have Episodic Acute stress are often short-tempered, irritable, and anxious.…

The hormone cortisol is a very important hormone for regular function in humans and many other animals. Cortisol is a steroid hormone (a derivative of cholesterol).1 It is produced in the adrenal glands of the kidneys2 and is especially important when an individual faces a stressor.3 Unusually high or low concentrations of cortisol will almost certainly have an adverse effect on regular human function. In healthy humans, cortisol is at its highest concentration when an individual…

Electrical and chemical synapses serve different functions in the nervous system, and the use of each type of synapse has advantages and disadvantages for situations requiring signal transmission. One of the advantages of the use of an electrical synapse is speed, as electrical synapses allow action potentials to pass directly from neuron to neuron through the use of gap junctions. This direct passage and resulting speed of transmission isn’t present in chemical synapses. Chemical synapses rely…

My Hemispheres and Me Our brain’s two hemispheres look alike, but they have different function. This specialization of the right and left hemisphere is called lateralization. In the past scientists learned about this functional specialization of our brain by observing people with brain damage or injury and examining they brains after death. Today scientist have other methods. They can monitor brain waves, blood flow, or glucose consumption in the brain to find out which part of the brain is…

Dickinson, who grew up in a Puritan environment, rejected many core tenants of Christianity such as sin and damnation, and her idea of eternity greatly diverged from the typical materialistic view of Heaven. However, she also did not conform to the tenants of Transcendentalism as her emphasis on the incomprehensibility of one’s spirituality and after-life clashed with the traditional belief in the full participation and absolute knowledge of the universe. As witnessed in much of her poetry,…