Download Articles about the Brain Works

Articles about the Brain Works
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Source: National Geographic Kids
Neurons send info to your brain at more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) per hour.
A bee lands on your bare foot. Sensory neurons in your skin relay this information to your spinal
cord and brain at a speed of more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) per hour. Your brain then
uses motor neurons to transmit the message back through your spinal cord to your foot to
shake the bee off quickly. Motor neurons can relay this information at more than 200 miles
(322 kilometers) per hour.
When you learn, you change the structure of your brain.
Riding a bike seems impossible at first. But soon you master it. How? As you practice, your brain
sends "bike riding" messages along certain pathways of neurons over and over, forming new
connections. In fact, the structure of your brain changes every time you learn, as well as
whenever you have a new thought or memory.
Source: www.ducksters.com
Biology for Kids
The Human Brain
The brain is where we do our thinking. All our senses are tied into our brain allowing us to
experience the outside world. We remember, have emotions, solve problems, worry about
stuff, dream about the future, and control our bodies in our brain.
For such an awesome organ, the brain doesn't look like much. It's a ball of gray looking wrinkled
tissue about the size of two of your fists put together. The brain sits in our hard, thick skull with
membranes and fluid around it to protect it.
How the Brain Communicates
The brain is part of the nervous system. Together with the spinal cord, it makes up the central
nervous system. The brain connects to nerves that travel throughout the body. Nerves from our
senses (hearing, seeing, touch, etc.) send signals to the brain to let the brain know what is going
on in the outside world. The brain also sends signals using nerves to muscles in order to make
our body move.
Parts of the Brain
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Cerebrum - The cerebrum is the biggest part of the brain. It's the gray wrinkly upper
part. The surface of the cerebrum is called the cerebral cortex. Different parts of the
cerebrum deal with different parts of the body. The back part deals with vision while
other parts deal with other functions like movement, hearing, language, and touch.
Smart or thinking people are sometimes called cerebral.
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Cerebellum - At the back and bottom of the brain is the cerebellum. This part of brain
deals with motor movement. It processes all the incoming motor messages from the
nerves and figures out what to do with them. The cerebellum can learn motor
movements with practice allowing us to do stuff like riding a bike or typing without even
thinking about it. Hey, I didn't think about typing this once!
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Brain Stem or Medulla - This is where the brain connects to the spinal cord. Also, many
automatic functions are controlled here like keeping the heart beating, breathing, and
digesting food.
Memory
The brain has two kinds of memory, short term memory and long term memory. Scientists are
still learning exactly how memory works, but they know that short term memory allows us to
remember something for a very short time without rehearsing or practicing it. We can't
remember a lot of things in short term memory though, and, like its name suggests, these
memories don't last very long.
The Brain Needs Energy
The brain may not move, but it needs lots of energy. Energy is sent to the brain by our blood.
There are lots of blood vessels and blood flowing through the brain at all times. The brain
actually uses around twenty percent of the body's energy.
The Brain Has Two Halves
The brain is divided into two halves. Since the nerves cross when they enter the brain, the left
side of our brain controls the right half of our body and the right side controls the left. Each half
also controls specialized functions. What each half does depends on whether you are left or
right handed. In a right handed person the left side of the brain is used for language and
numbers while the right side is the more artistic side and is also used for recognizing objects.
Source: Women’s and Children’s Health Network
What is the brain?
The brain is the control center for your body and it sits in your skull at the top of your spinal
cord. The brain has three main parts.
1. The cerebellum (say se-re-bell-um).
2. The cerebrum (say se-re-brum), which has two parts, the left and right cerebral
hemispheres, (say se-re-brell hem-iss-fears).
3. The brain stem controls a lot of the 'automatic' actions of your body, such as breathing
and heartbeat, and links the brain to the spinal cord and the rest of the body.
Your brain is wrapped in 3 layers of tissue and floats in a special shock-proof fluid to stop it
from getting bumped on the inside of your skull as your body moves around.
What the brain does
Your brain is more powerful, more complex and more clever than any computer ever built. It is
constantly dealing with hundreds of messages from the world around you, and from your body,
and telling your body what to do.
It gets the messages from your senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and
moving. The messages travel from nerve cells all over the body. They travel along nerve fibers
to nerve cells in the brain. Cranial nerves (say cray-nee-al) carry messages to and from the ears,
eyes, nose, throat, tongue and skin on your face and scalp. The spinal cord carries messages to
and from the arms, legs and trunk of the body.
Sensory nerves collect the information and send it to the brain along one
network then motor nerves take the brain's orders back along another network
(like cars travelling along their own side of the highway.)
Your brain collects all the information, sorts it out, thinks, remembers, creates,
compares, solves problems and coordinates actions all at the same time - even
when you're asleep! (And you don't have to be 'plugged in' and 'online' either!)
If you get too tired or don't eat enough food, your brain can't do this as well as
usual.
Control centers of the brain
Doctors and scientists have found that different
parts of the brain are in charge of different
things. Look at the diagram for an easy way to
understand.
The cerebellum controls and coordinates
movements of the muscles, like walking or
swinging the arms. This means that the
movement is smooth and controlled and you
don't fall over when you turn around. The
outside layer of the cerebrum has special areas,
which receive messages about sight, touch,
hearing and taste. Other areas control
movement, speech, learning, intelligence and personality.
The brain stem is in charge of keeping the automatic systems of your body working. You don't
have to think about breathing, you just do it automatically, but you can decide if you want to
hold your breath for a short time. You don't have to think about your heart beating because
your brain keeps it going automatically.
Interesting facts about the human brain
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Do you know that your brain has around 100 billion nerve cells?
It also has 1,000 billion other cells, which cover the nerve cells and
the parts of the nerve cells which form the links between one cell
and another, feed them and keep them healthy.

Your brain keeps on growing until you are about 20 years old. By then the brain has made lots
of links which it no longer needs so it is able to shed any unwanted connections and still have
billions of brain cells left to cope with whatever you may want to do. You can still make new
connections even when you are 100 years old, so get Grandma going on the computer - she
may not learn as fast as you but she can do it!

The front of the human brain is larger than any other animal's, even
the dinosaurs!
The left side of your brain is usually better at problem solving, math
and writing.
The right side of the brain is creative and helps you to be good at
art or music.
The brain stores all sorts of things in the memory including facts
and figures and all the smells, tastes and things you have seen,
heard or touched.
Your brain can also find things that you have remembered---like
how to spell ce-re-bell-um.
The adult brain weighs about 1.5kg.
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Looking after your brain
Your brain is protected inside your skull but could still be damaged if your head is hit or bumps
into something hard.
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Eating healthy food like fish and fresh vegetables.
Exercising your brain by learning new things and trying to remember them.
Getting plenty of sleep.
Dr. Kim says
The human brain is so complex that doctors and scientists still don't know
what some parts of it do. They do know that if the brain is damaged, the
damage often cannot be repaired. You can't join brain cells together like you can
do with bones. Doctors and scientists know how some of the brain works and
can sometimes fix it when things go wrong, but the brain is truly amazing and
we don't know all its secrets yet.