Psych

        This past week I was able to ride my bike from queens to Brooklyn, which was at least an hour and a half bike ride. While riding my bike through the boroughs I had to use different parts of my brain, including the brainstem that incorporates the Thalamus, Cerebellum, and Medulla. The thalamus is the brain’s sensory control center. It receives information from all the senses except smell and routes it to the higher brain regions that deal with seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching. While riding my bike my thalamus is working by easily sending messages to my optical lobe, connecting the also my hearing and sense of tasting and touching. This is something like a relay station for all the senses. The cerebellum or the “little brain” coordinates movement output and balance, and enables nonverbal learning and memory. This helped my navigate my way through my neighborhood since I am familiar with my area and also entering Brooklyn certain parts I had recognized from just being around there a couple times. Balancing certain movements and handling my bike through narrow streets and rocky roads gave me a sense of direction along with my memory of how to ride a bike. The medulla controls the heartbeat and breathing which is very important while bike riding since in order to do any type of movement I need to be breathing and have a pulse.

Being upset is not interesting, but it happens easily for me, this has to deal with the limbic system.  The Amygdala has certain neural clusters causing aggression; stimulation of the clusters can cause either fear or aggression depending on the position of agitation. However it is not the only place aggression can be linked to in the brain. The hypothalamus links the command chain governing bodily maintenance, some neural clusters in the hypothalamus influence hunger, regulate thirst, body temperature, and sexual behavior. When riding my bike this part of my brain can trigger the way I act towards the weather if I dressed appropriately since my body tells me if I am cold and my stomach can tell me if I am starving. This can go hand in hand with a reward system that gives me a sense of pleasure and can make me feel good. Another function within the Limbic system is the Hippocampus. The Hippocampus is linked to the conscious memory. Without this simple function of the brain we could be able to loose the ability to form new memories of facts and events. To loose this function while riding my bike would mean I would be lost constantly and could not even remember where I live certain things would not be remembered.