My favorite part of the brain

Hi, my name is Sophie. I'm gonna be talking about my favorite part of the brain. I'm recording this on TikTok because I don't know how to use technology and it was very confusing and hard for me to try to do like a split screen with my Google slide and also happy in it. So I'm just using green screen or TikTok. I will be moving out the way moving side to side to like show you the different images and text that is in the slides. But this is my favorite part of the brain. Okay, so my favorite part of the brain is the limbic system and the limbic system is the part of the brain that controls our behavioral and our emotional responses. And I find that very interesting since I am a psychology major and a lot of like what interests me is like why people act the way they have and like black people are responding the way that they do and why they do certain things. So like that's why I found the limbic system very interesting and the limbic system. It is made up of like a lot of different parts, but the main part is I'm going to be talking about today is the hypothalamus, the amygdala and the hippocampus because it was the one that I find the most interesting, but there are also many other parts like you can also find that the thalamus is in there, the basil, you can glia, and then there's a lot of other parts that are part of the Olympic system. It is found deep within the brain. Underneath this rainbow cortex and right above the brain stem. So that is where you're going to find the whole entire Olympic system. Okay, so the first part of the limbic system that I'm going to be talking about is the hypothalamus. So the hypothalamus can be found right below the thalamus and right above the pituitary gland. It is fairly small. It's about the size of an almond as you can see, but it does do a lot. It's in charge of regulating body temperature, controlling appetite, managing sexual behavior, regulating emotional responses, maintaining psychological changes, and also our sleep cycle. It's in charge of so legend it does so much for it to be so small. And when our hypothalamus is damaged, it could damage all of the things that I just mentioned could throw off your sleep cycle. It could change your appetite, so like all those unanswered questions of like, okay, why is my body feeling weird? Like, why am I not sleeping enough? Like, why can't I eat today? The answer is probably in the hypothalamus. The next part of the living system that I'm going to be talking about is the amygdala who amygdala is an almond shaped region. It is also small like the hippocampus, you can find it on both hemispheres of the brain and it is right in front of the hippocampus. Its main function is to regulate and control emotional responses and it also ties in emotional meaning to our memories. So when we think about an event from our childhood that brought us so much joy like we actually feel that feeling of joy when we think about it and that's because of the amygdala. When there's damage to the amygdala, there's problems. It causes problems with memory processing and emotional reactions and even your decision making and this is like another reason why I found the limbic system very interesting because like what's something like this would damage it causes people to act differently and do different things and it just answers a lot of unanswered questions that as I was saying before when there is damage to the amygdala it does cause problems with decision making which could lead people to do things or act a certain way that may not be right at the glare morally. So it answers a lot of those earnings questions when it comes to like why are there serial killers or like why did this person go from being like super nice and they're like such a good kid and now when they grow up they're like, oh hardcore criminal. So like they make them look into a lot of those questions and it also is known for being a big factor in our fight or flight, which is also like a good topic of discussion that a lot of people have like what causes fight or flight like how does it work like all of those unanswered questions you can find in the amygdala. Okay so the next and final part of the Olympic system I'm going to be talking about is the hippocampus, which is derived from the Greek word that means seahorse, the reason they call it that is because of its curved tube like shape. If you can see right there, it kind of resembles a seahorse. That is why they named it the way that they did. So the main functions of the hippocampus is to regulate learning, memory consolidation, memory encoding in spatial navigation. Whenever there is damage to the hippocampus, it causes a lot of problems with our memories since it does play a huge role in that, so whenever people have illnesses, like Alzheimer's, they have a hard time remembering like, oh, this is my son or this is what I ate for breakfast today. It's because they have damage to that hippocampus. And retaining memories are making new memories and keeping them in your brain is going to be hard to do because there is damage to that part of your brain and that plays a huge role in creating memories and retaining memories. Okay, so why is the limbic system my favorite part of the brain? I find it really interesting because like I said before, it helps you answer a lot of the hard unanswerable questions about our emotions and different situations and call it different emotional reactions. Like for example, as I was stating right here, trauma, I'm just take the time and let you guys read that. Pause if you want to read. Trauma is something that I learned about a lot since I was not only a psychology major, but a criminal justice major in trauma plays a huge role in both of those. So just like learning what makes trauma like what allows people to hold on to these memories, so vividly it's a lot of answers are in the limbic system. For example, the amygdala, it stores the emotional part of our memory, so how we feel when we think about something that is because of the amygdala. So when we go through a traumatic event, as I was saying before when we do go out there traumatic event, they amygdala, holds on to the emotional memories that are tied to that traumatic event, and that's why like when we go through something traumatic, not only do we remember like, okay, this is what happened. We remember the smells during that time. We remember the taste. What taste was in our mouth and remember the feeling. Remember, all the sensory details of the traumatic event we remember. And that's because of the amygdala and because it holds onto the sensory and the emotional aspects of a memory. And I just find that really interesting, especially considering the fact that I want to go into correctional psychology and a lot of people that are in the correction system, they do have traumatic past and they do have childhoods where they went through a lot of issues and not only understanding the social aspect of it, I want to understand the scientific aspect of it. I feel like the limbic system does help people gain more knowledge about emotional trauma and like just emotions in general because that plays a huge role and like I said before like why people act the way they act and the decisions they make. So the little mix system does play a huge role in that. It also plays a huge role in many different aspects, which I find very interesting like your sleep cycle, your appetite, which I touched on before, so like there's a lot of times when I would wonder why it was my appetite different today or like, why is my sleep cycles off? And yes, there are many factors that go into why that may be, but the limbic system does have a lot of answers for it. So I just find like all of that very interesting and that's why it's my favorite part of the brain.