Understand your brain — memory, attention, emotion, & more.

Parts of the brain

The brain is a team sport. The frontal lobe plans, decides, and speaks (Broca’s area) — it is your executive controller. The parietal lobe builds maps of touch and space so you can judge distance, track objects, and coordinate attention. The temporal lobe decodes sound and language (Wernicke’s area) and interacts with the hippocampus for memory. The occipital lobe is the visual headquarters, detecting edges, color, and motion.

Deeper structures add specialized power: the hippocampus forms new episodic memories and organizes spatial maps; the amygdala tags emotional significance and speeds quick reactions; the cerebellum fine-tunes timing, balance, and skill learning; and the brainstem keeps vital functions running (breathing, heart rate, arousal). These regions constantly exchange signals so a simple task — like catching a ball — recruits vision (occipital), prediction and control (frontal/cerebellum), attention to space (parietal), and quick error-correction (cerebellum/brainstem).

• Everyday example: Parallel parking uses parietal maps + cerebellum timing while the frontal lobe keeps attention on mirrors and pedals.
• Damage example: Stroke in Broca’s area → effortful speech with good understanding (expressive aphasia).

Memory types

Working memory is your short-term scratchpad for holding a phone number or juggling steps in a math problem. Episodic memory stores life’s events with time and place and depends strongly on the hippocampus. Semantic memory captures facts and meanings. Procedural memory encodes skills and habits — riding a bike, typing, or playing scales — often relying on the cerebellum and basal ganglia.

Strong memories come from retrieval practice (testing yourself), spacing (study over days), and interleaving related skills. Emotions can boost consolidation; distraction harms working memory. Sleep (deep NREM and REM) stabilizes and integrates what you learned.

• Study recipe: 3 short quizzes across a week > 1 long cram session.
• Mixing helps: Interleave similar problems (fractions + decimals) to strengthen discrimination.

Neurotransmitters

Neurons talk using chemical messengers. Dopamine signals motivation and reward prediction — spikes when outcomes are better than expected, helping you learn what to repeat. Serotonin helps regulate mood, sleep, and appetite. Acetylcholine supports attention and plasticity in cortex and is the transmitter at the neuromuscular junction. GABA is the main inhibitory transmitter: it calms over-excited circuits and allows precise timing.

Many medicines work by changing transmitter levels or receptor effects. For instance, benzodiazepines enhance GABA’s inhibition; some ADHD treatments boost dopamine and norepinephrine to improve focus; Alzheimer’s drugs often target acetylcholine to support learning.

• Prediction error: Unexpected praise after a tough task → dopamine burst → quicker habit formation.

Sleep

Sleep is not “off” — it is an active training ground. NREM (deep) sleep stabilizes and strengthens fresh memories. REM sleep links ideas, supports emotional processing, and can spark creative solutions. Your circadian rhythm is a ~24-hour clock set mainly by light; consistent timing, daylight in the morning, and a cool, dark room help you fall asleep faster and wake refreshed.

• Before bed: Stop heavy studying ~30–60 min before sleep; do a quick retrieval quiz instead.
• Power nap: 10–20 minutes can restore alertness without grogginess.