Brain Complexity: Structures of the Brain (Term Paper Sample)

Brain Complexity
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Brain Complexity
Structures of the Brain
In normal operation, the brain connects to the eyes, ears, nose, face and the spinal cord through nerves. The human spinal cord is made up of nerves running inside the vertebrae. The spinal cord thus serves as the information superhighway of the body. In addition to that, it provides the connection to the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system connects to the rest of the body through the nerves. These nerves reach the extremes of the body and the organs. The organs and tissues utilise the nerves to send messages to the spinal cord. (Pedley, 2014) In turn, the spinal cord sends the messages to the brain that interprets them. Afterwards, the brain sends a response to the requisite tissues and organs through the motor neurones. It is the basic operation of the nervous system. The brain forms the core and supervisory role of the human body. The operation of the grain in tandem with the rest of the nervous system provides critical operating environment.  Brain mass falls in three main categories: the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain. On this note, the forebrain comprises of the cerebrum, the hypothalamus, itself a part of the limbic structure and the thalamus. The midbrain has the tegmentum and tectum to itself. The hindbrain comprises of the medulla, the cerebellum, and pons. However, in regular parlance, the medulla, pons, and midbrain constitute the brain stem.  The cerebrum, divided into four lobes, constitutes the major part of the human brain. The cerebrum reserves the repute for the higher brain functions of thought and action. The frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and parietal lobe and occipital lobe form the four lobes of the cerebrum cortex. The lobes handle reasoning, movement, and planning; auditory stimuli, perception, and speech; stimuli perception and recognition; and visual perception respectively. A significant furrow separates the cortex into two separate regions referred to as the left and right hemispheres (Hampton, 2014). The two hemispheres appear symmetrical yet they possess different capabilities. The right hemisphere gets the reputation for creativity, while the left possesses the repute for logical constructs. A bundle of axons, named the corpus callosum, connects the two hemispheres.  Then gray surface of the cortex composes the nerve cells that utilise the white nerve fibres underneath for communication with the rest of the body. The mammals possess a six-layered structure within the cortex. Research indicates that this structure, the neocortex, possesses the functionality for higher functions in mammals.  The limbic system, contained within the cerebrum, consists of the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, amygdala, and thalamus. This region forms the emotion centre of the brain. The cerebellum has features similar to the cortex including the highly folded surface. However, posture, balance and orientation remain the central purpose of the cerebellum. The brain stem forms the simplest part of the brain system. This part of the brain sustains the basic, but critical, aspects of the body. These include breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and the like (Vogelstein et al, 2014). The brain stem consists of the midbrain system, the medulla, and pons. These have their own highly differentiated functions within the brain stem to support life. Reptile brains resemble the brain stem to a significantly high degree.
Encephalization Quotient
The actual brain size of an animal may differ from the predicted brain size of the animal relative to its size. Research hypotheses portend this as a reliable estimate of the intelligence level of an animal. However, the techniques developed under this approach apply only to mammals with a degree of certainty. They suffer significant drawbacks in the application to other animals. There exist other approaches that utilise other factors such as allometric effects over and above the brain to body mass proportion.  Markedly, brain to body size ratios display a positive correlation except in few cases. The positive correlation, however remains non-linear. For instance, humans and mice have similar ratios in the order of 1/40, while elephants have ratios of 1/560. The elephants possess the reputation of high intelligence, despite this fact. One reason behind this fact lays in the functionality. Brain neurons possess a relatively constant size; this makes the small animals require relatively larger brains than large animals (Wang et al, 2014). In addition, some brain functions apply the same way on large animals as they do in small animals. It means that smaller animals possess some parts disproportionately larger than large animals. Small animals tend to possess relatively larger brains than their large counterparts. However, that case does not apply to all functions of the brain, which thus increases the need for larger brains in large animals than in small ones. This phenomenon has the name cephalization factor. To this end, where E represents the body weight and S the brain weight, C represents the cephalization factor; E = CS2, in the formula.  Relative to the body, the larger the brain tends, the higher the ability of the animal to carry out complex tasks. It increases the intelligence of the animal. The simple reason behind this lays in the fact that the animal possesses more brain weight for tackling the complex tasks. In that case the cephalization ratio provides a more robust base of evaluating intelligence than do sheer brain size.  A number of factors affect the encephalization quotient. Social orientation plays the role of one of the most critical factors. Animals that possess highly social orientation possess higher encephalization quotient than the rest. It lays the ground for dogs possessing higher encephalization quotient than cats, and so do horses. Among all animals, humans have the highest encephalization quotient in social quarters by a significant margin. The other reason for differing encephalization quotient lays in diet (. M, 2014). Animals with nutrient deficient diets possess lower encephalization quotient than the rest. This emanates from the fact that brains broadly take a huge toll on maintenance costs in terms of energy requirements. The other possible reason for this observed difference lays in the dietary habits. Carnivores rely on stalking skills and hunting ability to track prey. It requires larger relative brains than do herbivores, which increases the encephalization quotient of carnivores.  A further possible reason for this trend lays in the nature of body constitution. Some animals have to deal with motor control and thermoregulation. Humans still possess the largest encephalization quotient of any animals to the extent that reptiles possess a tenth of the encephalization quotient of human beings.
Emotions
The expansive study of emotions in neuroscience increased significantly in recent times. The citation indices post exponential increase in recent times as intensity of inquiry into the ways of emotion gain momentum (Juels and Wong, 2014). This results from the ability to assess the emotional aspects of the human beings as results from the recent developments in scientific tools and robust theoretical understanding of the underpinnings of emotions. It increases the ability to treat neurological disorders and psychiatric conditions.  Neural mapping of the limbic system provided researchers with unparalleled insights into the workings of the human brain as far as emotions give concern. In that context, emotion presents itself as a pleasant or unpleasant state of perception in the limbic system from a neurological point of view. From a relative point of view, mammalian emotions play analogous to reptilian reactive responses. Neurochemicals escalate the response of broad vertebral patterns of arousal. These manifest themselves in the posture, body movements, and gestures. Pheromones likely mediate emotions. For instance, postulates posit that the emotion of love constitutes an expression of paleocircuits of the brain facilitating feeding offspring, care, and grooming. Paleocircuits consist of neural platforms that developed prior to the speech cortical circuits. Preconfigured pathways and nerve cell networks in the forebrain, spinal cord, and brainstem compose the neural platforms.  In reptiles, the motor centres react to haptic, sound, gravity, chemical, and visual cues. The responses constitute predetermined body movements and ingrained postures. When nocturnal animals developed, smell overshadowed vision as the primary sense. Researchers propose that this eventually developed into emotion through the reaction based in the olfactory sense. Mammals developed significant olfaction for nocturnal use, making the olfactory lobes significantly larger in mammals than in the reptiles. The pathways formed a primitive system that eventually developed into the limbic system.  Researchers propose that emotions relate to given activities in areas of the brain that direct attention determine a significance, and motivate behaviour. Early research proposed that the limbic system broadly deals with emotions. However, late research tends to show that some of the limbic structures possess show less significance than do others in an emotional context. In 2011, a system of utilising three substances to influence the emotions came to the fore (Lannin et al, 2014). It developed the understanding of eight basic emotions as permutations and combinations of the substances produced the difference. The substances dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline play significant roles in emotions.  The amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain, claims responsibility for a variety of emotions. It enables one to feel emotions as well as perceiving them in other individuals. In a research conducted by surgeons, p...