Women's and Children's Health Network

The brain
Kids' Health Topic
What is the brain?
The brain is the control centre for your body and it sits in your skull at the top of your spinal cord. The brain has three main parts.
 The cerebellum (say se-re-bell-um).  The cerebrum (say se-re-brum), which has two parts, the left and right cerebral

hemispheres, (say se-re-brell hem-iss-fears).
 The brain stem, that controls a lot of the 'automatic' actions of your body such as breathing

and heart beat, and links the brain to the spinal cord and the rest of the body. Your brain is wrapped in 3 layers of tissue and floats in a special shock-proof fluid to stop it from getting bumped on the inside of your skull as your body moves around.

What the brain does
Your brain is more powerful, more complex and more clever than any computer ever built. It is constantly dealing with hundreds of messages from the world around you, and from your body, and telling your body what to do. It gets the messages from your senses - seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and moving. The messages travel from nerve cells all over the body. They travel along nerve fibres to nerve cells in the brain. Cranial nerves (say cray-nee-al) carry messages to and from the ears, eyes, nose, throat, tongue and skin on your face and scalp. The spinal cord carries messages to and from the arms, legs and trunk of the body. Sensory nerves collect the information and send it to the brain along one network then motor nerves take the brain's orders back along another network (like cars travelling along their own side of the highway.) Your brain collects all the information, sorts it out, thinks, remembers, creates, compares, solves problems and coordinates actions all at the same time - even when you're asleep! (And you don't have to be 'plugged in' and 'online' either!) If you get too tired or