Word: cortexes
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...part of the brain that helps you know where the light switch is in your bathroom even if you can't see it in the middle of the night. The very last part of the brain to be pruned and shaped to its adult dimensions is the prefrontal cortex, home of the so-called executive functions - planning, setting priorities, organizing thoughts, suppressing impulses, weighing the consequences of one's actions. In other words, the final part of the brain to grow up is the part capable of deciding, I'll finish my homework and take out the garbage, and then...
...creates within brain circuitry the ability to pay attention. When you look at kids playing, adults see it as a waste of time. They have no clue what play does. Vigorous social play stimulates the growth of brain cells in the executive portion of the brain in the frontal cortex, and that lays the foundation for the circuitry of self-regulation, which is what you need to pay attention when you're at school. I'll just give you a very, very clear little example. We're talking about free play, not play that's monitored by adults. Because...
...powerful reminder that even the things about ourselves that we consider the most fundamental—our beliefs, our selves, and our basic conceptions of existence—are contingent facts, created by so much neurological circuitry. All it takes is a burst blood vessel in the cerebral cortex in order to completely alter our perception of reality...
...even if you, like the mouse, are low in RbAp48, don't pin all the blame for your memory loss on your hippocampus. As people get older, their attention starts to flicker, and that plays a role of its own. The prefrontal cortex, which controls planning, organization, abstraction and forethought, is the same region that allows us to concentrate, and it starts to diminish in size well before middle age. It also begins to use the brain's fuel, glucose, less efficiently and loses about half the neurotransmitter dopamine it once had. The result of all this, says Amy Arnsten...
...Yale, Arnsten has roused idling monkey and rat brains with a medication called guanfacine, which appears to amplify the circuits of the prefrontal cortex. The drug has been tested on children with ADHD as well as on people with traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress and schizophrenia, and in each case it seems to revitalize working memory...