“In a separate Blog Reflection, write about how you think memory impacts your ability to draw what you stared at for so long and which parts of the brain may be responsible.”
The thalamus relays what I see on the page to the cerebral cortex. The sensory information is processed and the hippocampus works to learn the patterns that I see on the page.
I have to conclude from my attempt to recreate the diagram of the brain (Sternberg. p. 42. fig. 2.6) that either I have a faulty hippocampus, or the original diagram is an ineffective tool for actually learning the anatomy and functions of the brain. Perhaps 5 minutes is not a sufficient space of time for learning something so complex. The hippocampus is my tool for forming new memories and supposedly helps me monitor the spatial relationships of the parts of the brain as I see them on the page. Sterberg’s diagram designates the parts of the brain in a cross section, diagramming the spatial relationships of the parts. Yet, after studying it for five minutes, there were parts that I could not recall either in name, function, or position.
The diagram, when I study it again in conjunction with the text, does not seem any more clear. There is nothing in the sketch to separate the pons from the midbrain, yet the pons is part of the hindbrain. Part of what prevented me from drawing an accurate sketch of the brain might have been the ambiguity of the original diagram.
Tags: anatomy, brain, cerebral cortex, hippocampus, learning, sternberg
