• Question: Which is the most complex part of the brain??

    Asked by drlovemuffin to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      Hello again drlovemuffin, you are good at this questioning malarkey (scientist in the making!).
      The outer part of the brain, the wrinkly bit, called the cortex does complicated things like thinking and making discissions. I look at the inner part, the hypothalamus which is known as the feeding centre as it helps regulate what and when we eat. However there is so much to learn about the brain that we just don’t understand or know how to investigate yet that really it could be any bit of it as the whole thing is pretty complicated and most parts are linked to each other and to other parts of the body too.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      For me it’s the memory system. There are so many different types of memory! We can have memory for names and places, we can have memory for past events, and memory for future events. To further complicate things we have short-term memory, long-term memory, and working memory (what you use when you do maths for example). Exploring memory is complex because how do you know you are tapping into the right type of memory?

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hey, I thought I already answered this question… the cortex is the most complex. See if you can find my answer in the answered questions 🙂

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Good question! I would say that all bits of the brain are equally complex, but they all do different things. For example, if people have damage to the front of their brain, they have problems with things like planning (which yuou could argue make us humans more ‘intelligent’ than other creatures). If you damage the cerebellum for example, you can different effects e.g. on the ability to move in a controlled manner

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