Watch and learn! Carefully selected media links will help bring key concepts and theories to life, preparing you for your studies and exams. 

Click on the following links which will open in a new window.

Video Links

• The Brain’s Inner Workings Part I
  Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, this video from NIMH explores the cerebral cortex and the nerve cells that lie within it.

• The Brain’s Inner Workings Part II: Cognition
  This video from NIMH is narrated by Tom Bosley, and looks at how higher order thinking is carried out in the brain.

• Basic Parts of the Brain - 3D Anatomy Tutorial
  An introduction to the parts of the brain.

Audio Links

• The Beatles’ Surprising Contribution to Brain Science.
  This Morning Edition report from the Society of Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans describes the brain’s specialized system for storing sequences, such as sequences of musical notes.

• A Lively Mind: Your Brain on Jane Austen
  Morning Edition covers the work of Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips, who has used MRI to study how reading the works of Jane Austen can affect the brain. She has discovered surprising differences between casual reading and more focused, “close reading.”

• What We Know About Treating Brain Disorders
  A Talk of the Nation story about brain injuries and post-traumatic stress.

Web Resources

• How Brain Mapping Works
  This website from “How Stuff Works” contains a good deal of fascinating information on brain mapping, as well as excellent photos of various brain mapping techniques.
  Follow-up exercise: Ask students to think of various uses for brain maps. (The website will give some starters.)

• Neuroscience activities
  “Neuroscience for Kids” has some good exercises and illustrations for “kids” of all ages, and is the source for the “sidedness” activity in this chapter.
  Follow-up exercise: The “experiment” link (on the left side of the screen) has a number of interesting exercises, including recipes for jello brains and instructions for making other interesting models of the nervous system.

• “The Split Brain Experiments”
  This website from Nobelprize.org introduces you to “Mr. Split Brainy” and his unusual condition.
  Follow-up exercise: Ask students to play the “Split Brain” game. When they click on different “stimuli” to “present them” on the right or left side of a screen, Mr. Split Brainy responds (or fails to respond) accordingly.

• Basic Neural Tutorials
  This website by John H. Krantz of Hanover College includes quizzes and tutorials on the structure of the neuron and of the brain