Brain Structures and Their Functions

The nervous system is your body's decision and communication center. The central nervous system (CNS) is made of the brain and the spinal cord and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) is made of nerves. Together they control every part of your daily life, from breathing and blinking to helping you memorize facts for a test. Nerves reach from your brain to your face, ears, eyes, nose, and spinal cord... and from the spinal cord to the rest of your body.

Howard Hoffman, On Life: "We tend to see only what we are prepared to comprehend."

In Spring 2011, six faculty members at Bryn Mawr College (Jody Cohen, Anne Dalke, Wil Franklin, and Alice Lesnick, Sara Nath and J.C. Todd) began meeting under the aegis of the Teaching and Learning Initiative to discuss course-based assessment, with a particular focus on modes of student self-assessment. Our conversation will again be supported in Spring 2012. We have created this page as an archive of our discussions and of resources, as well as a site for further discussion, to which everyone with an interest in these questions is warmly invited, in the forum area below and on the individual pages.

Our Motivating Questions

Our particular interest is in the question of self-assessment and its relation to broader conversations about assessment at the College and beyond.

Directional Terms

What Can Structures of the Brain Tell Us?

So far we have looked at brains, comparing their sizes and outer appearances. We have thought a little about intelligence and the relation between brain and body size. We have explored a bit about the encephalization quotient. We have seen many different kinds of brains, but only from the outside.

What if we look at these brains from the inside? What will we see? What can we learn by slicing into a brain and exploring the structures inside? What would you like to learn?

Looking at structures of the brain of an animal can reveal much about that animal. Have you thought of any differences between animals that interests you? As the pictures reveal, the brains of animals come in a large variety of sizes, shapes, and degrees of complexity. Why are they so varied? In what ways do different brains differ from one another? Do larger brains give greater adaptability to their owners? How are the observed differences in brain's external appearance reflected in their internal structure? Are different brains made up of different materials?

First, let's talk about the basics. What does it mean to "slice" a brain?