I love what I’ve been learning about the brain-the truly miraculous, glorious brain.  I’m going to begin to write about it; let me know what you think.
There are three main structures and two hemispheres.  In the future I will write about the two hemispheres.  For now just know they are so different from each other that some scientists think of us having two brains!
Today we will begin to look at the brain stem, limbic area and cortex.  The brainstem is the one area of the brain that is ready to go before birth in full term babies.  It controls respiration, sleep, vessel constriction, to name a few.  It also is the part of the brain that is closest to the spinal cord and helps relay information from the body to the brain.
In the center of the brain is the limbic area which includes the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalmus. This is the social part of the brain(relationships, motivation, emotional) as well as the part where memory is processed.  When we are born these areas are mostly comprised of separate neurons that are not yet connected to other neurons.
The amygdala lets us know, right from the beginning, whether a person or an environment is safe.  It is also the seat of implicit memory, which is the only form available to us for the first 12-18 months.