Historical Perspectives
This ancient physician was among the first to realize that the brain creates the mind.
Who is Galen?
These cells outnumber neurons by approximately ten to one and support critical functions in the nervous system.
What are glial cells?
Produced by oligodendrocytes, this fatty sheath insulates the axon to increase the speed of electrical signal propagation.
What is myelin?
This is the primary excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter in the central nervous system.
What is glutamate?
This pseudoscientific practice, championed by Gall, correlated bumps on the skull with localized brain functions.
What is phrenology?
This hindbrain structure contains about four times as many neurons as the cerebral cortex and is required for error-based motor learning.
What is the cerebellum?
Maintained primarily by sodium-potassium pumps, this electrical charge of a neuron at rest is approximately -70 millivolts.
What is the resting potential?
Produced in the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra, this monoaminergic neurotransmitter is critical for reward-guided learning and motor control.
What is dopamine?
A disorder characterized by nonsensical speech with spared articulation.
What is Wernicke's (or Fluent) Aphasia?
Found in the midbrain's tectum, this structure receives projections from the eye and assists with visual localization.
What is the superior colliculus?
During an action potential, depolarization is driven by the opening of channels that allow this ion to rush into the cell.
What is sodium?
The posterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus are key posterior components of this large-scale brain network.
What is the default-mode network?
Formulated by Karl Lashley, this principle states that the proportion of damage to the brain is directly related to the degree of memory impairment.
What is the Law of Mass Action?
This system includes the caudate and putamen; its degeneration can lead to excessive voluntary movement or the loss of it.
What are the basal ganglia (or dorsal striatum)?
These graded potentials act to hyperpolarize the postsynaptic cell, decreasing the probability of a postsynaptic action potential.
What are Inhibitory Postsynaptic Potentials (IPSPs)?
With cell bodies in the raphe nuclei, this neurotransmitter projects to limbic regions and is the primary target of SSRI medications.
What is serotonin?
This famous amnesic patient showed improved mirror-drawing performance over three days despite having no explicit memory of performing the task.
Who is Patient HM?
This major diencephalon structure acts as a relay center for sensory inputs via reciprocal loops with the cortex.
What is the thalamus?
This type of synaptic integration involves the accumulation of inputs from multiple different presynaptic terminals acting on the postsynaptic cell at the same time.
What is spatial summation?
This local coding theory posits that a single, specific cell encodes a highly complex concept, such as a specific famous actor, in an invariant way.
What is the Grandmother Cell (or Halle Berry neuron)?
This Columbia neuroscience professor designed a course to emphasize to students how much about the brain remains unknown.
Who is Stuart Firestein?
This anatomical slice orientation provides a frontal view of the brain, dividing it into anterior and posterior sections.
What is a coronal view?
In the context of Ohm's Law and synaptic integration, this physical property represents the change in voltage in the postsynaptic cell at a given time.
What is current?
Published in 2016, this brain atlas divides the human cerebral cortex into 180 regions based on both brain structure and function.
What is the Human Connectome Project (HCP) multimodal parcellation (MMP)?