The New SSS Blog

Cerebral Cortex — The wrinkled outer layer of the brain, and the seat of higher-order thinking. The folding (gyri = ridges, sulci = grooves) dramatically increases surface area. Divided into two hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum, and subdivided into four lobes.

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Frontal Lobe — The largest lobe, at the front. The brain's executive center:

• Executive function — planning, decision-making, impulse control, judgment

• Personality and social behavior — damage here can radically alter who a person is (famously illustrated by Phineas Gage)

• Motor cortex — the rear strip of the frontal lobe controls voluntary movement

• Speech production — Broca's area (usually left hemisphere) produces language

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Parietal Lobe — Behind the frontal lobe, at the top:

• Somatosensory cortex — processes touch, pain, temperature, and body position

• Spatial awareness — integrates sensory input to build a sense of where your body and objects are in space

• Attention — damage to the right parietal lobe can cause hemispatial neglect, where patients ignore the entire left side of their world

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Occipital Lobe — At the very back of the brain. Almost entirely dedicated to vision:

• Visual processing — receives raw input from the eyes and processes color, shape, motion, and depth

• Visual recognition — damage can cause blindness even with perfectly healthy eyes, or strange conditions like being unable to recognize faces (prosopagnosia)

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Temporal Lobe — On the sides, roughly behind the temples:

• Auditory processing — primary hearing cortex lives here

• Language comprehension — Wernicke's area (usually left hemisphere) understands spoken and written language; damage produces fluent but meaningless speech

• Object and face recognition — the "what" pathway for visual identification runs through here

• Memory consolidation — works closely with the hippocampus (which is tucked inside it)