Look at the front of each card, say your answer, then flip it to check. Use the arrow keys to move between cards and the space bar to flip.
Which region is highlighted?
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Where is it? Picture its position, then flip.
Key function: Decision-making, personality, voluntary movement
Damage to the frontal lobe can dramatically alter personality, as illustrated by the famous case of Phineas Gage in 1848.
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Key function: Sensory integration, spatial awareness, touch
The parietal lobe contains the somatosensory cortex, which maps the entire surface of the body - with the hands and face taking up a disproportionately large area.
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Key function: Hearing, language comprehension, memory encoding
Electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe can trigger vivid memories or déjà vu - a phenomenon first documented by neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield.
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Key function: Visual processing, object & colour recognition
Even when your eyes are closed, the occipital lobe remains active - it generates the imagery you see in dreams.
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Key function: Motor coordination, balance, fine motor skills
The cerebellum has roughly 69 billion neurons - more than all other brain regions combined - yet it accounts for only ~10% of total brain volume.
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Key function: Breathing, heart rate, sleep, reflexes
The brain stem controls functions you can't live without - breathing, heart rate, and sleep-wake cycles - and damage to it can be life-threatening even when the rest of the brain is intact.
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Key function: Memory formation, spatial navigation
London taxi drivers, who must memorise thousands of streets, have been found to have an enlarged hippocampus - a remarkable example of neuroplasticity.
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Key function: Emotional processing, fear response, aggression
Rare patients with damage to the amygdala on both sides of the brain show strikingly little fear of everyday threats - they can describe a situation as dangerous without feeling the usual emotional response.
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Key function: Sensory & motor relay, arousal, consciousness
Because virtually every sensory pathway passes through it, severe thalamic damage can cause a persistent vegetative state - earning it a reputation as a gatekeeper of consciousness.
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Key function: Interhemispheric communication, coordination
In rare 'split-brain' patients who had this structure surgically severed (historically to treat severe epilepsy), the two hemispheres can act with a surprising degree of independence.
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Key function: Movement initiation, habit formation, reward
The basal ganglia don't drive movement directly - they act more like a gatekeeper, selecting which movements to allow and suppressing competing ones, which is why their dysfunction can produce either too little movement (as in Parkinson's) or too much (as in Huntington's).
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Key function: Homeostasis, hormone regulation, stress response
Despite weighing only a few grams - roughly the size of an almond - the hypothalamus controls the pituitary gland, sometimes called the body's "master gland," making it one of the most disproportionately influential structures in the brain.
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Key function: Interoception, emotional awareness, social cognition
The insula is sometimes called the brain's "hidden lobe" because it's completely covered by folds of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes and isn't visible at all from the brain's outer surface.
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Key function: Emotion regulation, conflict monitoring, attention
The anterior cingulate cortex is one of the most consistently activated regions across brain-imaging studies of pain, error detection, and emotional conflict, leading some researchers to describe it as part of the brain's "alarm system."
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