The Different Components of Your Brain

Whatever the reason you came here, when I talk about components, I mostly mean literal, physical parts of your brain. Because if I wanted to talk about everything your brain can do for you, every ability and capability, every single function, it would take me years and years.

Long introduction short, your brain has 6 'pieces', all housed inside of 2 hemispheres (2 two halves of the cerebrum), which are connected by the corpus callosum (the great band of fibers uniting the two halves of the cerebrum).

If we'd look inside your head, we would firstly find the 4 lobes located in the brain cortex (which contains the cerebrum, or so called 'big brains'):

- Temporal Lobes:

Location: the left and right side of your head at the front of your head

Function: hearing, coordination of data, language

What happens when they are damaged?

Your long-term memory will deteriorate, you'll have less language ability and language comprehension

- Frontal Lobe: [1]

Location: The front of your head

Function: feelings, personality, judging, taking (wise) decisions (ratio)

What happens when they are damaged?

You'll have no empathy for anything (superficial personality), concentration and memory problems

- Parietal Lobes:

Location: The top of your head

Function: processing sensory input into action, understanding of maths and logic

What happens when they are damaged?

You're ability of thinking in series and logic decision making will deteriorate

- Occipital Lobes:

Location: left and right side of your head in the back of your head

Function: visual memory

What happens when they are damaged?

Quite obviously: no visual memory, only linguistic memory

After these 4 important lobes we're left with two spots in your brain, containing the:

- Limbic System: [2]

Location: the middle of your head

Function: emotion and memory

What happens when they are damaged?

You can't relate to anything or anyone, memorizing things will be much more difficult (because you can't relate or attach emotion to certain events), you become emotionless

- Cerebellum (small brains) [3]

Location: underneath the big brains

Function: motor memory

What happens when they are damaged?

You can't learn (and/or remember) movements (reflexes however, do not need the brain (that's why they are called reflexes and you do them unconsciously), so those are still executed)

As you see, I added an [1], [2] or [3] to certain parts of your brain, and that's because I will now tell you more about this specific part.

Let us first discuss the Frontal Lobe. What's so special about this lobe? Because it is the reason puberty happens. When we're teenagers, every part of our brain is nearing the end of development, but our frontal lobe just still has an huge leap to go. That's why young people take so much risks, why they always disagree with their parents, have huge mood swings, they do not see the consequences of actions or reasons they should do those actions (remember, the front lobe controls personality, feelings, judging, taking decisions, etc.).

Next is the Limbic System. We told you it controls emotion and memory, and that is true, but not in the way you might expect it to. Memory is not stored in one place in the brain, memory is stored in the place it belongs to (for example, your memory of a song is stored in your auditory part of the brain).

So if memory is stored in all parts of the brain, why (or how) does the Limbic System control memory then? Because it sorts all the input you get every second of your live and determines what's important and what not. Because while your living you get signals and signals and signals and signals all the time, and if you wanted to memorize and consciously experience them all, you'd become crazy. Therefore you need something to categorize all the sensory input, and that you find in 'emotion'.

Ask yourself: What do you remember better? The moment someone told you that you were a really good friend to him or her, or a certain mathematics class for example? The first one, obviously (or you're really really into mathematics). And that's because there's emotion involved, it's important for your social life, you can relate to it.

Your first kiss or a movie you've seen 10 times?

Your friend crying or a subject you've been studying all day?

A beautiful song or what you've eaten yesterday evening?

The emotional load you attach to something determines how well and if we put it into memory.

And last but not least about the Cerebellum. All I wanted to say is that this is the place you really train when you practice sports, and this is also the place you for example have stored how to ride a bicycle. And to explain where your brain stores your memory even more: motor memory of course also is memory, and it is stored in the part of your brain that controls your movements!