The Cerebral Cortex – ‘The Thinking Brain’

As we discussed last week, this is the outer part of the brain that is largely responsible for what we call ‘thinking’.[I] Over the next few weeks we will look at the different parts of our ‘thinking brain’.

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The outer part of the forebrain is called the cerebral cortex and is does largely what we term ‘thinking’. While it is only a thin layer, it makes up a great amount of the weight of our brains.[ii] It is responsible for

Abstract thought,
Higher intellectual functions, as well as
Integrating our senses, and
Controlling our voluntary movements.

The Areas of the Cerebral Cortex

To simplify, the cerebral cortex is often divided up into 3 functional areas.

Sensory

Motor, and

Association.[iii]

Sensory

The sensory areas receive information from our different senses with different areas specialising in different modalities.

Vision

Visual information from our eyes are largely targeted to the occipital lobe.

This area of the brain is responsible for the experience of vision. If someone injuries their eyes, they can still dream in imagines and imagine visual scenes. However, if someone has intact eyes but damage in this area of the brain, they cannot have any visual experiences including images in dreams. The eyes provide the stimulus but the visual cortex provides the experience.[iv]

However, the temporal lobes (on the side of our heads) are used for specialist parts of vision such as noticing movement and recognising faces.[v]

Sound

These temporal lobes are also largely the target for sound (auditory) information.[vi] They are essential for understanding spoken language.[vii]

Feeling

The parietal lobe gets information from our muscle-stretch receptors, our joint receptors and our touch receptors.

Not only does this help with our we ‘feel the world’ but it helps with other senses. If we see something in the top left of our vision, we need to know what direction our eyes are facing, the position of our head and our body so we can ‘know’ where that thing is.

As it has this spatial ability it also helps with numbers including counting on our fingers![viii]

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Conclusion

The thinking brain (Cerebral Cortex) can be divided into sensory, motor and association areas. The sensory area is responsible for our vision, hearing and feeling. The occipital lobe is largely responsible for our vision, our temporal lobes are largely responsible for hearing and the parietal lobe helps us know where our body is in space and feel what is around us. Next week we will look into how we move.

[i] https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-cerebral-cortex

[ii] https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-cerebral-cortex

[iii] https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-cerebral-cortex

[iv] Kalat, J. W. (2015). Biological psychology. Nelson Education.

[v] Kalat, J. W. (2015).

[vi] Kalat, J. W. (2015).

[vii] Kalat, J. W. (2015).

[viii] Kalat, J. W. (2015).

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