Learning about the brain can be overwhelming. Being the control center for everything from breathing to complex thought, the roughly 3lb central organ of the nervous system is supremely complicated. With this in mind, we at Thrive understand that you have a lot of questions about the brains functions, and why certain parts of your brain are being trained before others. In this blog post, we have taken the lobes of the brain and broken them down to the basic functions housed in each. This is a very succinct overview, but in the weeks to come we will post whole blog posts on each lobe so you can do a deeper dive into learning about each. In the mean time, you can use this as a quick reference.
The Frontal Lobes:
Executive Functioning, Problem Solving, Organization
Motivation, Decision Making
Judgement, Impulse Control
Social Behavior
Memory, Learning
Reward
Attention, Concentration
Emotional Expression
Personality
Initiation
Collects, filters and directs information from the outside world throughout brain
Handles our most primitive skill sets and also our most evolutionary advanced cognitive skills.
Where anxiety, worry, ruminating, overthinking mostly lives in the brain
Temporal Lobes:
Organization and Sequencing
Short and Long Term Memory
Hearing and Speech
Visual Processing
Learning
Information Retrieval
Understanding Language - word find, sequencing, verbalizing, fluency
Emotional Memory
Spatial Navigation, Balance, Tinnitus and Vertigo
Central Lobe:
Initiation of Voluntary and Involuntary Muscles Movement
Fine Motor Control and Skill
Registers and Processes Sensory Information from Internal and External World
Processes Sense of Body and Limb Position and Sequence of Movements
Athletic, Physical Coordination and Abilities
Coordinating Attention
Main cortex connection to the functioning of the nervous system and its rhythm
Parietal Lobes:
Reading, Writing, Drawing
Math Calculations, Data Processing
Memorizing Facts
Photographic and Associative Memory
Attention
Visual Perception and Recall
Motor Skill & Athletic Ability
Processes sensory information from our body
Differentiation: Size, Shape, Color, texture
Spatial Perception
Facial and Object Recognition
Connection to Self Image and Social Awareness via Associative Recognition of Others Body Language and Facial Feedback
Occipital Lobes:
Visual Reception, Interpretation and encoding of visual data
Distance, Size, Shape and Depth Perception
Determining Color Properties, shapes, symbols
Reading (Perception and Visual Recognition)
Local Orientation - Where we exist in relation to everything else
Filters information, sensation and experience from the body (via brain stem), processes and sends the info to the rest of the brain
Enhances awareness of and informs gut instinct and intuition
Grounds the body in space and time and increases presence via awareness of the body without a mental interpretation
Increases Sense of Connection to Self and Others
Centers the body during interactions with others or situations with intense outside stimuli
Remember, the brain works all together, and while some functions are centralized in certain areas all lobes of the brain must be able to communicate effectively for optimal function. Training one part of the brain doesn't mean you can neglect the other parts. Just like in other parts of life, good communication is key, and you might have to train the whole brain to see maximum results!
Stay tuned for full posts on each lobe and the amygdala in the coming few weeks!
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