Your Brain Map Homework

Your Brain Map: 84 Strategies for Accelerated Learning

Link to the simulation :Brain Map

Cerebral Cortex

1. What do the frontal lobes do? Controls personality, problem solving, memory, language, judgement, and impulse control. Overall it executes behavior. 
2. What is the relationship between selective attention and learning? Selective attention makes your memory capacity greater by prioritizing more important info over less important info. Therefore when learning, you should be thinking about selective attention rather than just memorizing facts. 
3. What is the last part of your brain to develop and what can you do to prevent it from deteriorating? The frontal lobe will be the last part to develop and the first to deteriorate. You can prevent it by not zoning out and transforming information instead of trying to commit it to memory. 
4. What does the neo cortex do? It helps you navigate your body through your senses, spatial awareness, and motor skills. 
5. What is the role of the pre frontal cortex? It controls your personality by organizing your thoughts and actions. 
6. What do we know about the pre frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking? Multitasking is not real and is actually just the pre frontal cortex jumping back and forth between tasks quickly. 
7. Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development? Give an interesting fact about this region. Broca's area is responsible for speech and language development. An interesting fact is that tongue twisters are suppose to help the functioning of this area. 
8. Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?” Somatosensory cortex. 
9. What does your visual cortex do for you? It helps differentiate colors and see complex things like faces 
10. State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe. One interesting fact is there are different lobes for different purposes like color and sensing motion. Another fact is that it is responsible for your imagination. Thirdly, it's proven that imagining/ visualizing a situation is proven to help you perform better. 
11. What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged? You would have no long term memory and forget everyday things like dates and where you placed your keys. 
12. What is your “fast brain” and what does it do? The eye fields are the fast brain. They control eye movement and pick up information is mere milliseconds- faster than any other part of the brain. 

Neuron 

1. State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses, and have a positive affect on your life and health. Exercising and a healthy diet will positively affect your life and synapses, as omega fatty acids provide good brain power and improve synapse function. Socializing is also proven to help fire more synapses. 
2. What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites? Multi-sensory and multi-modal stimulations in dendrites lead to greater retention because the information is stored in more than one place, making it more likely that you will remember the information. 
3. How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning? It helps because your brain can see the "big picture" then break down the information into smaller sections. On top of that mnemonics help because it is an easy way to remember information due to its tangibility compared to abstract facts. 
4. Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important. Justify your reasoning. Dopamine is a natural neurotransmitter that makes you feel happy. It makes you want to try new things, and an incentive for the brain to retain new information because it will make you happy. However, it can also be abused as many drugs stimulate the release of dopamine. 

Limbic System 

1. What does the corpus callosum do? It communicated between the right and left hemispheres. It is responsible for oral language skills and reading. 
2. What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum? Music helps strengthen the communication between the 2 hemispheres, therefore increasing the function of the corpus callosum. 
3. Why is the thalamus important? It is important because it not only relays information to the cortex and is responsible for processing information (cognitive functions of the brain), it is responsible for retrieving memories. 

Relate and Review
Summarize what you learned from this tutorial. Relate what you learned to your everyday life and how you can make it better. Use at least 5 of the bolded words from the questions. 5-sentence minimum. You may use the back of this if needed.
One thing I learned from this tutorial was the importance of a healthy lifestyle. It affects the big things like weight and overall health but it also has an incredible important impact on the smaller parts of the body like the synapses, which function more effectively when healthier foods are eaten. I should aim to eat healthier to aid my memorization, especially with all the AP test going on right now. I also learned that music boosts the corpus callosum, which makes all my hours in band seem justified and might even make me practice my instrument more often. Another part of the brain, the visual cortex appears to be linked to the occipital lobe in that both provide the function of allowing us to see, which definitely makes you think about things you take for granted everyday like sight. Lastly, the temporal lobe proves to an important part of my everyday life. Although we might not notice it, the temporal lobe is responsible for memory long term and some short term. I could only imagine what it would be like to have to deal with no longer term memory- in fact, I might not have remember any of this information!