Neuro Science

Brain Structure/Brain Anatomy

Brain Structure in this note refer specifically to the structure of Human brain. It is not general term applies to all animals. There are some animals that does not have brain (even though they have their own nervous system). There are a lot of animal species that has brain but the detailed structure of them are different among species.

In this note, I would like to focus on Human brain structure since my main intereste lies in human neurosience more specifically in understanding myself.

However it is not the purpose (and out of my capability) to describe the full details of human brain like the Brain Anatomy text book in medical school. It is not possible for me to dig into that far since I have never been trained in medical school, but plan to provide information bare enough to understand technical articles / watch lectures on YouTube.. and (hopefully) be enough for those exposed to basic anatomy in biology course.

Why I don't like Anatomy ? and How to get it over ?
Do you know how the brain placed inside the skull ?
Why we should study/learn on Brain Anatomy
How to study/learn on brain anatomy ?
Vocabularies for Directions
Structure of Cerebral Cortex
Planar / Sectional View of the Brain
Brodmann's Map
Gyri

Why I don't like Anatomy ? and How to get it over ?

There might be some people who likes Anatomy and memorize all the name of all those names to the very tiny parts at the corner without much difficulties and stress. But unfortunately I am not that type of person and a lot of readers would be similar type as I am.

I started thinking of why I don't like it and came out with a few reasons :

I am not so interested in it
The vacabularies in Anatomy does not look familiar. I am not a native engilish speaker and am struggling with english, but most of the vocabularies in anatomy is even worse than english to me since they are mostly based on Latin and Greek.

Unfortunately I don't have any one shot solution for any of these. Especially for the first item, I didn't even try to find the solution because I know there is no clear solution for it. But I think there would at least something to try for the second one. It is to make my own word book for Latin and Greek try to remorize it whenever I see those words from the labels on the pictures in Anatomy books. I would not recommend you to write down hundreds of Latin/Greek words and try to remember it by rote memory. Just put those words in your notebook whenever you see the new words and try to check on the meaning of the words in Latin/Greek dictionary. Some references under Dictionary section may help you with this.

One good thing for this and building a Greek/Latin vacabulary in your memory would help you not only anantomy but also for other subjects (like biology, organic chemistry, biochemistry etc).

Why we should study / learn on Brain Anatomy ?

If you are not a big fan of Anatomy, you would have ask this to yourself many times and try to avoid looking into brain anatomy even though you are strongly interested in neuroscience / brain science. Personally I am not a big fan of anatomy and extremely poor at anything that requires a certain degree of rote memory. so I asked the same questions over and over to myself. Unfortunately I haven't found any way / reason to avoid studying brain anatomy to study about neuroscience / brain science. A few reasons why I should study on the anatomy are listed below :

Most of research papers, text book, articles are refering to some specific regions in brain (or in our nervous system) when they are explain about memory procedure, neuro placiticity etc. But most of them just mentions about the name of the region without showing any image/drawings etc.
If you just read these text without imagining the region in your mind, it would be hard to follow through the stories in the text. Even though you managed to follow through the stories when you are reading it, the memory would go away very soon if you don't associate the story (verval description) with the image of the region in the brain.

In short, regardless of whether you like or not, a certain level knowledge of brain anatomy is a mandate and you cannot avoid it.

How to study/learn on Brain Anatomy ?

If you are a student in medical program, there wouldn't be much thing I can advise or propose mainly because there wouldn't be much options except just following whatever you are asked to do in your program. To be honest, I don't think the way you are asked to do in most of school program is the best and the most efficient way to learn anything, but it may be good enough to memorize many things in relatively short period. (I don't know how long you can maintain/retain the memory after the end of the course).

I don't think the way we are being tought or trained at school is the best/efficient way in terms of neurocience / educational psychology. Interestingly even the educational program about neuroscience does not seem to go in such a way that is suggested to be efficient in the theory/research of neuroscience/educational psychology.

My personal way of learning / memorizing about brain anatomy is as follows. I don't know if this is the best way, but it seems the best fit for myself and I don't feel any stress about this. I have extremly poor memory and I extremly hate the process of rote memorization. But doing this way, I see myself getting rapidly familiar with the overal brain anatomy without getting any stress. Of course, I am not at the expert level in this area, but I think I reached pretty good position as an hobbiest.

Read or watch anything about Brain Science that you are interested.
If any of them talk about any brain region with whtich you are not familiar without any picture, check out this note or any other reference showing the image of the region. Don't try to memorize it, just confirm the region in the image.==> One of the best way is ... take out pen and paper and draw the structure on the paper and label each of the region in your own writing. You don't have to do it every time... just once or twice of drawing in your own hand would be great help. In my case, I purchased a sketch pad and draw pictures on power point slide and use the drawings in my note here.
If you do this practice several time, you would getting familiar with the region and terminology(name) of the region even though you don't memorize it.
If you continue to the practice even further, you would notice that you start memorizing even though you didn't try==> this is when the image about the region converted into long term memory and stored in your brain.
If you do this further, you would get overall framework about the overal structure of the region inside your brain. this kind of mental framework is called schema. That is, you start building your own scheme about the brain region you are intersted.
Once you are building up this kind of schema, it will become more easier to learn/memorize about the new regions fuctionally or locationally related to the brain region that are already in your long term memory.

NOTE : I agree that this way of studying would take much longer time comparing to what you are asked to do in your school program, but I am pretty sure that it would be much less stressful and help you to keep your interest and maintain/retain the memory much longer.

Do you know how the brain placed inside the skull ?

I think everybody would have seen a picture of a human brain as shown below. Do you know which is front (the part right inside your forehead) and which is back (the part right inside your backhead) ? Don't be disappointed if you don't know. I myself had been confused for a long, long time. Sometimes I put the labels on the picture indicating 'front' and 'back', but soon get confused again if I see the picture with no label.

Finally I found my own trick to remember the front and back of the brain image. It is to get the picture (or drawing it in your own would be even better) with skull as shown below. You don't even label the front and back. Just imprint this image in your brain (memory) as a picture and recall this image whenever you get confused.

Vocabularies for Directions

I think the first thing that we should be familiar with would be a list of words indicating the directions since those words would pop up in almost every basic materials (articles, lectures etc). Again.. most of the words for the direction are also Greek/Latin based. A short list of those words representing the directions are listed below.

ROSTRAL / ANTERIOR : towards the 'head' end
CAUDAL / POSTERIOR : towards the 'tail' end
DORSAL / SUPERIOR : back or upper surface
VENTRAL / INFERIOR : belly or under surface
MEDIAL : towards the middle line
LATERAL : towards the side

Applying these words to the highest level brain structre is as follows : Just try to remember the whole image with label in your brain until you can recall these images automatically whenever you see those words.

Structure of Cerebral Cortex

Probably one of the most important picture that you should be familiar with would be this. The cerebral cortex(surface) of our brain can be divided into several import area as shown below. Whatever texts or video you would read/watch about neuroscience, you would see at least one of the names (labels) shown here.

NOTE : If you have chance to read research articles or papers, there would be cases where you don't see any of these names. But it is because those articles or papers refers to a very specific area within one of these area with very specialized name.

Planar / Sectional View of the Brain

Untill we have hologram as our everyday display, we would need to rely on represending everything (the brain as well) in 2 dimensional display. Even it the computer display and text book drawing some 3D objects it is still the prjection of the 3D object onto 2D plane, not real 3D. One common way is to help you to get an idea of a 3D object in 2D display is to cut through the 3D object with various 2D plane and let your brain to imagine it in 3D in your brain.

Unlike other parts of nervous system (e.g, spinal cord, peripheral nerves etc), brain is a bulky 3D object with very complicated internal structure. We would need to cut through it in various different angles to get the full picture. So it has been a long practice to get the image of a cut-through image by anatomoy or by brain imaging (e.g, MRI, CT, fMRI) and you would need quite a lot of practice to interpret those cut-through images in the context of 3D brain.

A few of the most frequently used cut-through plane are shown as below. You may have seen such a description like "this is sagittal section of the brain" or "this is coronal section of the brain" etc.

Image Source : LEC 1A - Anatomy Of The Nervous System

Following is an example of the sectional image with Coronal, Sggital, Horizontal plane. You may need to quite a lot of practice to identify a certan part of brain region (e.g, hypothalmus or hippocampus etc) in each sectional image. For example, some of the region would be seen only in a specific section, not in other sections.

Image Source : LEC 1A - Anatomy Of The Nervous System

Brodmann's Map

I think you may have seen most of the drawings / pictures in previous sections when you are reading / studying neuroscience as an hobbiest. However there wouldn't be many cases where you see a little bit more detailed classification of brain reason as shown below. This is called Brodmann's map naming after the scientist who created this map. If you can figure out a reason just by looking at the numbers in other text and lecture or at least know what the number mean and find out any document showing the details, you would consider yourself as pretty experienced in neuroscience. I am not expecting you to memorize all the details of this map. It would be enough if you know what to look for when you see the comments like 'Broadmann map 17' or just the number 17.

Image Source : Hallucinations Experienced by Visually Impaired: Charles Bonnet Syndrome (ResearchGate)

This is the table with the name/label for each of the numbered area shown in the map showing a little bit of description.

Brodmann area	Abbreviation	Name of the Brodmann Area
BA01	S1	Primary somatosensory cortex
BA02	S2	Secondary Somatosensory cortex
BA03	S3	Tertiary Somatosensory cortex
BA04	M1	Primary motor cortex
BA05	SPS	Superior parietal sulcus
BA06	SMA	Supplimentary motor area
BA07	SPG	Superior Parietal Gyrus
BA08	Pre-SMA	Pre-supplimentary motor area
BA09	DLPFC	Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
BA10	FPC	Fronto-parietal cortex
BA11	OFC	Orbital frontal cortex
BA13	Insula	Insula
BA17	V1	Primary visual cortex
BA18	V2	Secondary visual cortex
BA19	Cuneus	Cuneus
BA20	ITG	Inferior temporal gyrus
BA21	MTG	Medial temporal gyrus
BA22	STG	Superior temporal gyrus
BA23	PCC1	Posterior cingulate cortex1
BA24	dACC	Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
BA25	sgACC	Subgenual anterior cingulate cortex
BA27	PHC1	Parahippocampal gyrus
BA28	HIP1	Hippocampal area
BA29	RSC1	Retrosplenial cortex1
BA30	RSC2	Retrosplenial cortex2
BA31	PCC2	Posterior cingulate cortex2
BA32	prACC	Pregenual anterior cingulate cortex
BA33	rACC	Rostral anterior cingulate cortex
BA34	HIP	Hippocampus
BA35	HIP2	Hippocampus area2
BA36	PHC2	Parahippocampal gyrus2
BA37	OTC	Occipital-temporal cortex
BA38	TP	Temporal pole
BA39	AG	Angular gyrus
BA40	IPS	Intra-parietal sulcus
BA41	A1	Primary auditory cortex
BA42	A2	Secondary auditory cortex
BA43	PCG	Postcentral gyrus
BA44	OPCG	Opercular part of inferior frontal gyrus
BA45	IFG	Inferior frontal gyrus
BA46	MPFC	Medial prefrontal cortex
BA47	VLPFC	Ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex

Gyri of Human Brain

The human brain is a marvel of intricate folds and ridges, and gyri are the prominent ridges that give it this characteristic appearance. These convolutions are not merely aesthetic; they significantly increase the brain's surface area, allowing for a greater density of neurons and enhanced cognitive function within the confines of the skull. Gyri play a crucial role in various brain functions, with specific gyri often specializing in particular tasks, such as processing sensory information, controlling motor movements, or contributing to language and memory. Understanding the structure and function of gyri is essential for unraveling the complexities of the human brain and its remarkable capabilities.

Followings are the list of well defined Gyri in human brain