Lobes of the Human Brain

The Frontal Lobe: Your frontal lobe is your control panel of your brain. It's where you personality and emotions originate. In addition, it controls your ability to problem solve, your memory, language/speech and sexual behaviors.

Motor Cortex: the role of the Motor Cortex also known as M1 is to generate neural impulses that creates and controls movement throughout the body. Each part of the body is represented in the M1 region. Almost all behavior is attributed to the Motor Cortex. Movement includes but is not limited to talking, walking, sudden movements or even reaching for a glass of water.

Somatosensory Cortex: The somatosensory cortex receives all sensory input from the body. The cells sense feelings in our skin, pain, visual, or auditory stimuli and send all information absorbed to the somatosensory cortex for processing.

Parietal Lobe: The parietal lobe is located above the occipital lobe of the brain and behind the frontal lobe. The lobe is named for the parietal bone that sits directly over the region as part of the skull. The parietal lobe is known to interpret sensory information, such as letting you know the location of parts of your body and aiding in physical navigation. For example, your parietal lobe automatically tells you where your tongue is as you chew to keep you from biting it.

Occipital Lobe:

The occipital lobe is home to most of the brain's visual cortex, allowing you not only to see and process stimuli from the external world, but also to assign meaning to and remember visual perceptions.

Some portions of the occipital lobe receives inputs from other brain regions and aid in the following functions:

• Mapping the visual world, which helps with both spatial reasoning and visual memory. Most vision involves some type of memory, since scanning the visual field requires you to recall that which you saw just a second ago.

• Determining color properties of the items in the visual field.

• Assessing distance, size, and depth.

• Identifying visual stimuli, particularly familiar faces and objects.

• Transmitting visual information to other brain regions so that those brain lobes can encode memories, assign meaning, craft appropriate motor and linguistic responses, and continually respond to information from the surrounding world.

• Receiving raw visual data from perceptual sensors in the eyes' retina.

Cerebellum:

The cerebellum is located behind the top part of the brain stem (where the spinal cord meets the brain) and is made of two hemispheres (halves). The cerebellum receives information from the sensory systems, the spinal cord, and other parts of the brain and then regulates motor movements. The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination, and speech, resulting in a smooth and balanced muscular activity. It is also important for learning motor behaviors.

Temporal Lobe:

The Temporal Lobe specializes in processing sensory input- particularly audiory. This lobe processes hearing, and conveys the information into meaningful units such as speech and words.

It's important to note that injuries to each individual lobe of the brain can be interpreted differently and that symptoms may not show up right away. It may take days, weeks, or months to show their face. For me and my TBI experience, I sustained injuries to the frontal and occipital lobes of the brain as well as injuries to my cerebellum. It was difficult to figure out everything that was damaged. Which if you think about it makes sense- your brain is one giant organ full of pathways that are woven and interconnected around each other. When one section, or segment is damaged it often alters the pathway- making the signals unreachable or non transferable- leaving the most important part of the human body in chaos. I’ve learned that although frustrating at times, the brain is such a neat object that no one can figure out. WE, TBI survivors become experts of our brains. Often times our existence, our stories, and our brains become life changing research for someone else down the road and I think that’s pretty incredible. It’s the silver lining in the storm for me.