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Word of the Day: Cerebral Cortex
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What do walnuts and our Word of the Day have in common?
Well, it’s a stretch, but fun to think about. If you crack open a walnut carefully, you can see it has two “sides”—just like the human brain. And that’s where our “word of the day” comes in.
The cerebral cortex covers most of the other brain parts inside your head—making up two-thirds of the brain’s mass. No surprise, since the cerebral cortex is what allows us to speak and understand, learn languages, play music, and a lot more.
Like a walnut, the cerebral cortex has two sides called “hemispheres.” The left hemisphere rules things like our ability to talk, write, and learn languages. The right hemisphere rules our musical abilities, and how we figure out distances and other “spatial” challenges. For example, does it look like you and all your friends can fit into that diner booth? Oops, not quite.
And that’s not all. Our sense of touch also uses both hemispheres of our brain! Walnuts anyone?
For more brainy words and others, check out NIDA’s glossary.
Word of the Day: Brainstem
What can our bodies do without us even thinking about it? Lots of things, actually. And that’s what the Word of the Day is about. The Brainstem, not surprisingly, is a “stem” that connects the brain to the spinal cord. Its basic functions include directing heart rate, breathing, arousal, and sleeping. Lucky for us, the brainstem does all these things automatically. That’s why you don’t forget to breathe when you’re asleep!
How? The brainstem directs the spinal cord, other parts of the brain, and the body to do what is necessary to maintain our life.
The brainstem is one of the more primitive parts of our brain—it dates back to the age of the dinosaurs! Just like another primitive part of our brain, the limbic system.
One of the reasons that addictive drugs exert such powerful control over our behavior is that they act directly on our primitive brainstem and limbic system.
For more brainy words and others, check out the NIDA for Teens glossary that fuels my words of the day.
