• Question: how many parts are they in a human brain????

    Asked by anon-188707 to Paul, Nadine on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Cool question. It depends on which parts you’re looking at exactly.
      So on a large level the brain has three parts: forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain (front, middle and back)
      But each of these parts has different lobes. Overall there are four lobes of the brain: frontal lobe in the front, temporal lobes on the sides, occipital lobe at the back of head that attaches to the eyes and parietal lobe that’s sort of on the top.
      The lobes themselves have all sorts of structures in them: Broca’s area which heavily influences speech, Wernicke’s area which comprehends language, hippocampus which is associated with memory among other things, amygdala which has to do with our emotions, and so many many more structures.
      And all of these structures are made up of brain cells called neurons. The average human brain has a 100 billion of these.

    • Photo: Paul Matusz

      Paul Matusz answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      That’s a very cool question and the answer differs on whether and which techniques you’re using to draw borders between different areas – these can stem from the type of cells making up the areas, or a function of an area – but then also the function can be determined in many different ways. Here there’s a good summary of how many areas are there according to the latest research – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-brain-map-doubles-known-number-regions-180959869/

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