ShmoopTube

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We speak student! And here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by, the brain. Which

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is far too fatty, for some zombies, gluten-free brain. Alright energy homeostasis

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is the ideal rate of energy consumption that helps maintain body weight and is

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mostly controlled by the, what? And here are the potential answers.

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[murdering] Alright some of these are pretty funny. The brain is the

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main organ of the nervous system and it's found in all vertebrate and most [multiple choice and brain photo]

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invertebrate animals and congressmen. Humans differ from most mammals, because

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we have a much more developed cerebral cortex. This allows for better planning,

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reasoning and abstract thought. Basically the reason we have zoos. So is

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homeostasis controlled by B, the thalamus? Well the thalamus is involved in sensory

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and motor signal relay, as well as the regulation of consciousness and sleep.

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This is pretty important stuff, but it isn't what we're looking for in the [romans in coliseum]

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question. Let's cross off B from our potential answers there. How about C,

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the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of cells, that is

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involved in many of our emotions and motivations. It also determines what

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memories are stored in your brain. So again pretty cool, but not what we are after. So

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cross off C. But would it be D, the hippopotamus, a hippocampus, sorry.

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The hippocampus, which is not a university for a certain African animal, actually

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plays a major role in long-term memory and spatial navigation. Not regulating [two hippopotamuses]

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homeostasis, so ditch D. Perhaps it E, the fornix. Well the fornix, despite

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sounding like an underground punk rock band, is actually a bundle of nerves that

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carry signals from the hippocampus to other parts of the brain. If we cross E

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off our list then we're just left with yeah A, the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus

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controls homeostasis in part, by controlling the metabolic rate. Basically

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it tells you when to eat, when to stop eating and other stuff. Oddly enough our

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hypothalamus seems to shut down whenever we eat sour patch kids. Like well

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that might be just us. So the correct answer is A, hypothalamus. Well we've

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learned about quite a few parts of the brain, in this lesson. Maybe next week [picture of a brain]

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we'll discover the part, that keeps getting Katy Perry songs stuck

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our head. Baby you're a firework. We didn't say we could sing. Gluten-free brains.

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