Human Anatomy and Physiology

Eleventh Edition

Chapter 12
The Central Nervous System

PowerPoint® Lecture Slides prepared by Karen Dunbar Kareiva, Ivy Tech Community College

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Why This Matters
• Understanding the central nervous system contributes to your work with brain and spinal
cord injuries such as stroke

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Brain Regions and Organization

• Gray matter: short, nonmyelinated

neurons and cell bodies

• White matter: myelinated and

nonmyelinated axons

• Basic pattern found in CNS: central cavity

surrounded by gray matter, with white
matter external to gray matter

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12.2 Cerebral Hemispheres
• Cerebral hemispheres form superior part of brain
– Account for 83% of brain mass
– Cerebral dominance: refers to hemisphere that is dominant for language
▪ 90% of humans have left-sided dominance
▪ Usually results in right-handedness
▪ In other 10%, roles of hemispheres are reversed

• Surface markings:
– Gyri: ridges
– Sulci: shallow grooves

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Cerebral Cortex
• Cerebral cortex is “executive suite” of brain

• Site of conscious mind: awareness, sensory perception, voluntary motor initiation,

communication, memory storage, understanding

• Thin (2–4 mm) superficial layer of gray matter

– Composed of neuron cell bodies, dendrites, glial cells, and blood vessels, but
no axons

• 40% of mass of brain

Functional Neuroimaging
(fMRI) of the Cerebral
Cortex
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12.2 Cerebral Hemispheres
• Several sulci divide each hemisphere into five lobes
– Frontal
– Parietal
– Temporal
– Occipital
– Insula

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Animation – Rotatable Brain

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Rotatable Brain

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Cerebral Cortex
• Four general considerations of cerebral cortex:
1. Contains three types of functional areas:
▪ Motor areas: control voluntary movement
▪ Sensory areas: conscious awareness of sensation
▪ Association areas: integrate diverse information
2. Each hemisphere is concerned with contralateral (opposite) side of body
3. Lateralization (specialization) of cortical function can occur in only one hemisphere
4. Conscious behavior involves entire cortex in one way or another

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Cerebral Cortex
– Primary somatosensory cortex
▪ Receives general sensory information from skin and proprioceptors of
skeletal muscle, joints, and tendons
▪ Capable of spatial discrimination: identification of body region being
stimulated
▪ Somatosensory homunculus: upside-down caricatures represent
contralateral sensory input from body regions

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Cerebral Cortex
– Visual areas
▪ Primary visual cortex located on extreme posterior tip of occipital lobe
– Receives visual information from retinas
▪ Visual association area surrounds primary visual cortex
– Uses past visual experiences to interpret visual stimuli (color, form, or
movement)
• Example: ability to recognize faces
– Complex processing involves entire posterior half of cerebral hemispheres

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Cerebral Cortex
– Auditory areas
▪ Primary auditory cortex
– Interprets information from inner ear as pitch, loudness, and location
▪ Auditory association area
– Located posterior to primary auditory cortex
– Stores memories of sounds and permits perception of sound stimulus

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 Diffusion Tensor MRI Reveals Fiber Tracts
in the Brain and Spinal Cord

Cerebral White Matter

Figure 12.36 Diffusion tensor MRI reveals fiber tracts in the brain and spinal cord.

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12.5 Cerebellum
• 11% of brain mass

• Processes input from cortex, brain stem, and sensory receptors to provide precise,
coordinated movements of skeletal muscles

• Also plays a major role in balance

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Cerebellar Processing
• Cerebellum fine-tunes motor activity as follows:
1. Receives impulses from cerebral cortex of intent to initiate voluntary muscle
contraction
2. Receives signals from proprioceptors throughout body, as well as visual and
equilibrium pathways that:
▪ Pathways continuously “inform” cerebellum of body’s position and momentum
3. Cerebellar cortex calculates the best way to smoothly coordinate muscle
contraction
4. Sends “blueprint” of coordinated movement to cerebral motor cortex and brain
stem nuclei

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12.7 Higher Mental Functions
• Analysis of higher mental functions include:
– Language
– Memory
– Brain waves and EEGs
– Consciousness
– Sleep and sleep-wake cycles

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 Language
• Language implementation system involves association cortex of left hemisphere

• Main areas include:

– Broca’s area: involved in speech production
▪ Patients with lesions in Broca’s understand words, but cannot speak
– Wernicke’s area: involved in understanding spoken and written words
▪ Patients with lesions in Wernicke’s can speak, but words are nonsensible

• Corresponding areas on right side are involved with nonverbal language components

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Memory
• Memory: storage and retrieval of information

• Different kinds of memory

– Declarative memory of facts (names,
faces, words, dates)
– Procedural memory of skills (playing
piano)
– Motor memory memory of motor skills
(riding a bike)
– Emotional memory memory of
experiences linked to an emotion (heart
pounding when you hear rattlesnake)
• Two stages of declarative memory storage:
– Short-term memory (STM, or working
memory): temporary holding of
information
▪ Limited to seven or eight pieces of
information
– Long-term memory (LTM) has limitless
capacity

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Brain Wave Patterns and the EEG
• Brain waves reflect electrical activity of higher mental
functions
– Normal brain functions are continuous and hard to
measure

• Electroencephalogram (EEG) records electrical activity

that accompanies brain function
– Used for diagnosing epilepsy and sleep disorders
– Localizes lesions, tumors, infarcts, infections,
abscesses
– Used in research and also to determine brain death
– Electrodes placed on scalp measure electrical
potential differences between various cortical areas

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Brain Wave Patterns and the EEG
• EEG measures patterns of neuronal electrical
activity generated by synaptic activity in cortex
– Each person's brain waves are unique
– Patterns change with age, sensory
stimuli, brain disease, and chemical state
of body

• Measures wave frequency in Hertz (Hz),

numbers of peaks per second (1 Hz = 1 peak
per second)

• Can be grouped into four classes based on Hz:

– Alpha, beta, theta, or delta waves

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Sleep and Sleep-Wake Cycles
• Sleep: state of partial unconsciousness from
which person can be aroused by stimulation

• Cortical activity is depressed, but brain stem

activity doesn’t change

• Types of sleep:
– Two major types of sleep (defined by
EEG patterns)
▪ Non–rapid eye movement (NREM)
sleep
– Broken into four stages
▪ Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep

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• Types of sleep (cont.):
– We pass through first two stages of NREM during the first 30–45 minutes of sleep,
then move into stages 3 and 4, referred to as slow-wave sleep
▪ Frequency of waves declines, but amplitude increases
▪ EEG, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and GI motility change

• Types of sleep (cont.):

– At ~90 minutes in, fourth stage ends, and REM sleep begins abruptly
▪ Temporary paralysis, except for rapid eye movements
▪ Oxygen consumption, heart rate, and breathing increase; increase can be
greater than when awake
▪ Most dreaming occurs in REM

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Sleep and Sleep-Wake Cycles
• Importance of sleep
– Slow-wave sleep (NREM stages 3 and 4) presumed to be restorative stage
– People deprived of REM sleep become moody and depressed
– REM sleep may:
1. Give brain opportunity to analyze day’s events and work through emotional
events or problems
2. Eliminate unneeded synapses that were formed (dream to forget)

Daily sleep requirements decline with age

Stage 4 sleep declines steadily and may
disappear after age 60

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Blood Brain Barrier
• Helps maintain stable environment for brain
– Chemical variations could lead to uncontrollable neuron firings

• Substances from blood must first past through continuous endothelium of capillary walls
before gaining entry into neurons
– Tight junctions ensure substances pass through, not around endothelial cells
– Feet of astrocytes and smooth muscle-like pericytes surround endothelial cells
▪ Help to promote tight junction formation in endothelial cells

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Blood Brain Barrier
• Substances move through endothelial cells via:
▪ Simple diffusion – allows lipid-soluble substances, as well as blood gases to pass
freely through cell membrane
▪ Specific transport mechanisms – facilitated diffusion moves substances
important to the brain such as glucose, amino acids and specific ion
– Transcytosis moves larger substances into and out of brain

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 12.10 Spinal Cord
• Spinal cord is enclosed in vertebral column
– Begins at the foramen magnum
– Ends at L1 or L2 vertebra

• Functions
– Provides two-way communication to
and from brain and body
– Major reflex center: reflexes are
initiated and completed at spinal cord

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Gross Anatomy and Protection
• Protected by bone, meninges, and CSF

• Epidural space
– Cushion of fat and network of veins
in space between vertebrae and
spinal dura mater (outer layer)

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Pathways of selected ascending spinal cord tracts. Example of descending pathways by
which the brain influences movement.

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