 Has your brain ever wondered what the parts of the brain are and what are their functions? Well, that's basically what we're gonna talk about in this video So what you're looking at is a section of your brain and to make sense of this Let's say you could see someone's brain from the top Then you would be able to see the two hemispheres like this. Don't worry. This is not a brain This is just a walnut. It looks very similar to the brain, but let's say these are two hemispheres Now imagine you cut this walnut and then you look at the inside side of This one then you will see something like this, right? The inner side of one of the halves Well, that's basically what we're looking at. It's the inner side of one of the hemispheres. Okay So let's get rid of that and look at the different parts. We can broadly divide our brain into three parts The forebrain, which is this big yellow section the midbrain, which is this tiny pink section and The hindbrain or the lower brain, which is this blue section Usually when we say humans have big brain, you're basically talking about this forebrain section Okay, and then the midbrain is actually the beginning part of the brain stem Brain stem is is brain stem is on top of which the forebrain sits The brain stem connects the forebrain to the spinal cord. This continues as the spinal cord So the beginning section of that brain stem is what we call as the midbrain and Then the later section of the brain stem is a part of the hindbrain Right, this is the hindbrain and the hindbrain also consists of this section You know this itself looks like a mini brain all by itself But that and the remaining portion of that brain stem is basically what we call the hindbrain Okay, so what are the functions of them before we get into the details to get a broad sense of what these parts do We can think that the forebrain is responsible for all the voluntary functions and the midbrain and the hindbrain together Are responsible for all the involuntary functions So when I say voluntary think about all the actions that you carry out Consciously by thinking about them like to take a walk or maybe you talk to someone or decide to watch this video about Brains so all of that is from your forebrain and of course we'll talk more details about that in a second and When I say involuntary functions There are some functions that are happening in your body which are not in control What which you're not in control of for example your heart beating or maybe your digestion You're not in control of those right So those are mostly taken care by your midbrain and the hindbrain So how do we remember which part does which well the way I like to think about it Is I remember that now what makes humans special is their big brain big forebrain? And I remember that we have this amazing intellectual ability right our intelligence so forebrain gives us our intelligence So it's because of that I can do all my thinking in all my decisions And also I can walk and talk because of this so that's how I basically remember forebrain controls voluntary actions With this in mind. Let's look at the functions and the parts in a little bit more detail So let's zoom out a little bit And I've made some space so that we can write more parts So let's start with the forebrain if you look at the forebrain you can again kind of see two Sections of it the outer section which contains a lot of folds and the inner section Let me shade that inner section a little bit darker so we can identify that So the outer section Right this big giant outer section. It's called It's called. Let me call that it's called the cerebrum cerebrum sorry The cerebrum this whole outer section which I have colored with light yellow is the cerebrum And we're not gonna look at further parts of that. Okay, so that's the outer section for us If you look at the inner section, we're gonna look at three parts of the inner section Okay, one part which is over here. So let me Put an arrow mark like this then one part which is a little below that I'm gonna write over here somewhere. Okay, wait a second Yeah, let me write that over here and This small thing that you can see that one. These are the three parts that we need to remember at least for our syllabus, okay So this one, you know, we call that that is called the thalamus. Let me use this color Okay, it's called the thalamus and these are all Greek names. Okay, so it will not make sense to us But I looked up thalamus kind of means an inner portion or inner region And it's basically what this is right the inner region of our forebrain So the come that the the part that comes below that is called hypothalamus So the next part is hypothalamus and Hypokind of means lower. So it's the lower part of the thalamus hypothalamus and This last part which we will be interested in this one the small thing that you can see over here That is called the pituitary gland pituitary gland Right this part over here. Okay, so these are the four parts of our forebrain So these are the only parts that we'll concentrate on so let me just put them together so this is Your forebrain parts All right, so what do they do what are their functions when we don't have to look at the Individual functions. We don't have to do that. But the forebrain as a whole. What does it do? Well, one of the things like we already said voluntary functions, but again, let's dig a little deeper What does it do? One of the things that you can think of is thinking Right, and when I say thinking I'm including a lot of things over here because there's not much space thinking your learning ability Your speech language all of that all of that comes from your forebrain But what else? To think about what else your forebrain can do take a look at this picture The reason you are able to see this is because of your forebrain. You may be wondering, wait, it's my eyes, right? It's eyes But the eyes send the signal to the brain and it's your forebrain that does the processing and that's why you can see it Similarly, you can hear me right now because of your forebrain all the five senses You can sense them because of your forebrain and so one important Function of your forebrain is sensing. Let me just write that as sensing Okay What else? Well, you identified this picture, right? It's a puppy. Did you confuse it with something like maybe a donkey or tiger? No, the reason you can even remember it's a puppy is because of your memory because you know what puppies look like and you can associate with it. So that also comes from your forebrain memory Learning all of that comes from your forebrain Now when you look at this puppy some kind of Emotion came in right like you may have felt. Oh, what a cute puppy. You may have felt happy looking at it Maybe if I showed you some different picture, maybe if I showed you some scary picture, you would experience fear, right? So all the emotions they too come from Your forebrain all your emotions including love. That's all right. Love does not come from the heart It comes from your forebrain. In fact fun story the other day my wife asked me Hey, how much do you love me? I said I love you with all my forebrain Yeah, she hasn't spoken to me since but it was worth it. All right Now besides these there are also other things that the forebrain does some of the feelings that you get like for example the feeling of hunger The feeling of being sleepy Thirst or maybe you know after you have finished a meal the feeling of fullness all of that Also comes from your forebrain actually that comes from this part of the forebrain But we don't have to remember all those things. So these are some of the functions of your forebrain. So what's next? We're not gonna look at the parts of the midbrain. It's a tiny section will not look at its parts So let's jump directly to the hindbrain If you look at this brain stem more here the blue section you can actually see two distinct regions over there So one region one lump over here and one more here, right, so this one This one, let me use a different color. All right, so this one over here. It's called Pons That's the name given to it Pons again. I know little weird name It's Latin again. It means bridge. It's kind of like bridging between the middle brain and this bottom part That brings us to this bottom part, which is pretty important for us The bottom one is called I don't want to hear it's called medulla Medulla Oblongata Okay, we're gonna look at its functions separately and then you can look at this big region Let's make it dark so we can see that So this region which kind of looks like a brain on its own is called cerebellum Do not confuse that with cerebrum. Cerebrum is the biggest part of our brain Cerebellum that's the name given to this So these three regions These three regions are going to be the part of our hindbrain These are hindbrain and since we're not gonna look at the parts of the midbrain. This is it This is all the parts that we need to remember So again, what are the functions of the hindbrain? We already saw it's involuntary But let's look at the individual and let's look at medulla oblongata and the cerebellum these two are important for us So what does the medulla oblongata do? Well, again, it controls most of the life-giving involuntary processes Okay, so We'll say life giving Involuntary processes in I just write in wall. Okay in voluntary processes That means these are the most essential for life like your heart beating your Breathing digestion all of those essential things are taken care by your medulla oblongata Along with that it also controls some of your reflexes Now if you've studied about reflexes before you may be wondering. Hey, isn't that controlled by your? By your spinal cord. Yes, some of them are controlled by the spinal cord But some of the reflexes like your sneezing coughing those are controlled by your medulla oblongata All right The idea is the reflexes are not controlled by your thinking part of the brain none of the reflexes are controlled by the forebrain That's why they even called reflexes, but the medulla does control Some of your reflexes as well. So these are two major functions of the medulla Okay, what about the cerebellum? It's getting a little crowded. I hope you can see them apart. So again, I'm gonna put some division over here Anyways, so what does cerebellum do? Well cerebellum also has some involuntary function, but it's a little different one of its function is to maintain balance Balance now what I mean by this is if you want to even the simplest of the simplest tasks like walking Or maybe holding a cup These things requires careful calculation Coordination you need to think about where the gravity is and all of those stuff Right, if you try to build a robot, it's then you actually see how complicated those things are But we do it with ease that's because of our cerebellum because it is the one that maintains balance And along with that another major function is motor memory motor Memory, what's that? Well, think of writing a bicycle with the first time when you were trying to learn the bicycle You are using a lot of your forebrain. You were learning You're learning to get balance. You were learning how the pedal works. You were learning maybe how to Do the trinketing and everything you all those things you're learning But once you learn that once you have done enough practice now when you want to ride your bicycle We don't even think about it. We say it's it has become our second nature Right all of things happen automatically How it's the cerebellum It's this that's what we call as motor memory Another example could be let's say when you're typing on a keyboard if you have enough Enough practice. You don't have to look down anymore. You don't have to worry about which keys are there It just automatically happens motor memory. So all those things are controlled by the cerebellum And you know how I can remember this I remember this Uh by remembering that you know when people drink alcohol, it's their cerebellum that gets affected Think about it. If your cerebellum gets affected your balance gets affected And that's why people who are intoxicated they can't balance themselves. They will be walking funny and everything They may no longer be in a position to ride a bicycle It's actually one of the reasons why we say don't drink and drive because your motor memory gets affected So even the most basic things that initially Usually we think it's easy for us to do like while driving that gets affected. All right, so that's how I remember The functions of the cerebellum All right, so finally remember and wondering what about the midbrain? So this is our midbrain, right? We're not going to look at the parts of the midbrain Midbrain also controls some of the involuntary functions For example, when you shine light in your eyes, your pupils become smaller That is controlled by your midbrain So the midbrain also controls some of your involuntary functions, but we're not going to look at that And this is pretty much it for us Now since this screen itself contains the entire summary Why don't you try pausing the video and then revise and then see if you can recall all the parts and the functions without looking