Brain Dissection Analysis

all them pins

Today we dissected a sheep's brain. The brain we had did not have much of a meninges,  a protective layer that surrounds the brain. After removing that, we identified the cerebrum, cerebellum brainstem, anterior and posterior parts of the brain. Red is the brainstem, yellow is the cerebellum, green is the cerebrum, white is the anterior half of the brain and black is the posterior half of the brain. We identified these sections of the brain through the clay brain model we made earlier in the unit.

The function of the Cerebellum is to coordinate voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination, and speech, resulting in smooth and balanced muscular activity.

The brainstem regulates heart rate, breathing, sleeping, and eating.

The Cerebrum controls the high thinking such as thought and action.

The function of myelin in a neuron is to protect the neuron.

horizontal cut

Thalamus Yellow -  consciousness, sleep, and sensory interpretation

Optic nerve Green - transfer visual information from the retina to the vision centers of the brain via electrical impulses

Medulla Oblongata Pink - regulate breathing, heart and blood vessel function, digestion, sneezing, and swallowing

Pons Purple - It is a bridge between various parts of the nervous system

Midbrain Blue - a portion of the central nervous system associated with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep/wake, arousal (alertness), and temperature regulation.

Corpus Callosum Red - integrates motor, sensory, and cognitive performances between the cerebral cortex on one side of the brain to the same region on the other side.

Hypothalamus Brown - links the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland

In this dissection, I did all of the actual dissection, such as cutting the brain in half both horizontally and vertically. During said dissecting, it was hard to find certain parts of the brain because it was so different to the diagrams we had been learning the parts of the brain from.