Your brain is your most powerful organ, yet weighs only about three pounds.

It has a texture similar to firm jelly. It has three main parts:

1. The cerebrum fills up most of your skull. It is involved in remembering, problem solving, thinking, and feeling. It also controls movement. 2. The cerebellum sits at the back of your head, under the cerebrum. It controls coordination and balance. 3. The brain stem sits beneath your cerebrum in front of your cerebellum. It connects the brain to the spinal cord and controls automatic functions such as breathing, digestion, heart rate and blood pressure.

Your brain is nourished by one of your body's richest networks of blood vessels.
With each heartbeat, arteries carry about 20 to 25 percent of your blood to your brain, where billions of cells use about 20 percent of the oxygen and fuel your blood carries. When you are thinking hard, your brain may use up to 50 percent of the fuel and oxygen. The whole vessel network includes veins and capillaries in addition to arteries.

Your brain's wrinkled surface is a specialized outer layer of the cerebrum called the cortex. Scientists have "mapped" the cortex by identifying areas strongly linked to certain functions.
Specific regions of the cortex: Interpret sensations from your body, and sights, sounds and smells from the outside world. Generate thoughts, solve problems and make plans. Form and store memories. Control voluntary movement.

The Neurological Basis of Learning

Learning, memory and perception are the main functions of the brain, and these functions are intimately related to one another. For example, learning also results in changes in memory and perception. What we perceive and remember is a function of what we have learned to expect in a particular situation. The ability of a pre-school or schoolaged child learn a designated task, whether it is a social interaction or an academic skill, depends mainly on two things: 1. The childs past history of learning and the changes to brain structure and function that this has produced. 2. Aspects of brain function and structure that are genetically determined.