Brain+Anatomy

=Brain Anatomy= This is a conceptual drawing of a human brain, looking at it from the front. The squiggly bits at the top and centre represent the cortex, which is scrunched up to save space. The bulges are called gyri (one is a gyrus) and the creases are called sulci (one is called a sulcus). You can see here that the brain is symmetrical in construction, so we say it is made up of left and right hemispheres. The bright white bit in the middle is part of the corpus colossum, which allows the left hemisphere to communicate with the right hemisphere. The pinkish bits at the bottom are the two hemispheres of the cerebellum (latin for "little brain").

Brains are complex and three-dimensional, so it's handy to know the conventions we use to navigate the brain. Both rostral and anterior mean towards the front. Dorsal and superior mean towards the top. Caudal and posterior mean towards the back. Ventral and inferior mean towards the bottom. The terms rostral, dorsal, caudal and ventral refer to general anatomical directions for mammal bodies. The terms and anterior, superior, posterior, and inferior come from the Latin words for before, above, after, and below. Wikipedia contains an explanation of why we have both of these ways of describing direction in the brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location.