Special Report: The Brain
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Mapping the mind

For all its majesty, the brain is not much to look at - a mass of grayish-pink, convoluted matter with the consistency of warm Jell-O. No wonder it has been nicknamed "wetware" by computer scientists hoping to translate its secrets into technology.

Though the brain represents less than 2 percent of your body weight, it uses 25 percent of the oxygen you breathe and 70 percent of your glucose supply.

The brain has five basic regions:

• Cerebellum. Coordinates body movement.

• Brain stem. Responsible for basic life functions such as blood pressure and breathing.

• Thalamus. A Grand Central relay station for incoming data from all the senses except smell.

• Hypothalamus. A regulator of hunger, thirst, sleep, sexuality and emotions.

• Cerebrum. Our "gray matter," home to thought, vision, language, memory, emotions. It's divided into hemispheres. If you're right-handed, odds are the right hemisphere is where you make sense of music, images, space, emotions. Your left hemisphere is apt to focus on math, language, speech. In left-handed people, tasks are usually reversed.

  The brain works via the communication of nerve cells along complicated circuit patterns that register on encephalograms as brain waves, including the relaxed "alpha waves" so beloved by meditators.

  By Jim Thornton
  Thornton received a 1998 National Magazine Award for health reporting.
  Illustration Credit: TONY STONE IMAGES