Learning Objectives
- Be able to name and locate the lobes of the cerebral cortex and describe their functions.
- Locate specified structures and regions in the brain, understand how they fit together, and describe their main functions.
- Become familiar with seminal findings in functional neuroanatomy through famous case studies.
Materials
- Model brain (1 per table)
- Hand sanitizer (1 per table)
- Dry Erase Markers and Erasers
- Mini White Boards (2 per table)
- Labels for model brain (12 per table)
- Black container for labels (1 per table)
- Poster Tack to stick labels to model brain
- Personal computers and smartphones for research
Overview
- This lab introduces the brain by examining some of the major structures. Students will be expected to take a leading role in research to appropriately identify the structures in the models.
- The case study activity further provides an opportunity to explore some seminal findings in Neuroscience, as well as have a better understanding of functional neuroanatomy.
Time Allocation
| Introduction | 5 Minutes |
|---|---|
| Short lecture component | 5 Minutes |
| Activity 1: Build a Brain | 15 Minutes |
| Activity 2: Case Studies | 20 Minutes |
| Take Home Message/Wrap-up | 5 Minutes |
| Final Submission Question | 5 Minutes |
Introduction (5 Min)
- This lab is an introduction to neurobiology – we are going to look at the structure and function of different parts of the brain.
Lecture component (5 min)
- We will start the lab with a bit of vocabulary about how to refer to the brain in a three-dimensional space. This is not a lot of content, but make sure to go through it slowly and repeat it a couple times to make sure everyone is on the same page.
- We will also have a brief introduction on the divisions of the cerebral cortex into lobes.
Activity 1: Build a Brain (15 min)
- Students will disassemble and assemble the brain model, identifying major structures indicated on the slides.
- Locate the Structure: Using resources of their choosing (textbook, internet research, online atlases) they will identify the structures listed on the slide. They will use the blue poster tack provided to attach the labels to the brain. This may be difficult for some of the internal structures, so you can have them leave one temporal lobe off the brain, if necessary, to facilitate labelling it.
Activity 2: Guided Research (20 mins)
- Each group will be assigned a prompt for one of several famous case studies or disorders in Neuroscience.
- Together, they will research on this topic in a variety of online sources to structure a few bullet points of this case study. Such as:
- What are the symptoms evidenced in the case?
- What structure is thought to be affected?
- How does the structure affected relate to the clinical presentation? What functions are being disrupted? What functions persist?
The cases themselves are:
- Patient H.M
- Phineas Gage
- Patient S.M.
- Split-Brain Syndrome.
- Blindsight
- Wernicke and Broca’s Aphasia. (You can split this into two groups if there are 7)
NOTE: please try to finish a couple minutes early and ask students to a.) put their brain back together, b.) put the label back in their black container, and c.) wipe down any surfaces with tack residue on them.
Take-home Message & Wrap-Up (5 min)
- Hopefully they had a gentle introduction to neuroanatomy.
- Much of modern neuroscience has been built on clinical case studies
- The Brain works as a system (“Patchwork” of overlapping functions, as
opposed to strict localization).
Final Submission (5 min):
For their submission this week, students will answer the following question via Brightspace:
How do case studies like the ones we discussed today help us understand structure and function in the human brain?