Neuroanatomy I

The first two weeks of Brain, Mind, and Behavior are really packed with anatomy labs. We have 5 anatomy labs dissecting the brain, the neck, the skull, the orbit (eye), and the face. It's been really intense. Before starting this course, I didn't know much of brain anatomy. Despite the prototypic picture of the brain, a lot of structures are really nebulous: hypothalamus, thalamus, basal ganglia, pons. I hear about these things, and I might have some sense of what they do, but I really don't know where they are in the brain. The head also has twelve cranial nerves which are fundamental to understanding neurology; we have to locate and identify the cranial nerves from several different perspectives. The brain is just such a black-box organ that I've learned an incredible amount over the last ten days in anatomy lab. I never really thought about how it sits in the cranial cavity or what sections look like or how the blood vessels work.

In the first lab, we looked at all sorts of specimens: whole brains, brains cut down the middle, skulls, dura (outer covering of the brain), and spinal cord. It's a fairly overwhelming feeling to be holding a brain and thinking, here lies all the memories, thoughts, experiences, emotions of this person. Unlike the kidney or liver, the brain really tugs on your feelings.

This became very apparent when we did the second lab. In this lab, part of the skullcap of the cadaver had been removed, leaving an intact brain. We used a tool called a brain knife to actually section the brain, cutting out slices and examining the tissue. It was amazing. It's a strange feeling, cutting into someone's brain, and I don't think I'd call it a good feeling, but it was certainly a mindboggling one. I learned a whole lot.