believe that the function of the brain is to cool blood, or that an immaterial
thing performs cognition outside the brain, we cannot escape from a basic
introduction to brain anatomy in this chapter.
3.2 THE ANATOMY OF THE HUMAN BRAINIn this section we will undertake a short survey of the most important
structures of the human brain (England & Wakely, 2006; Byrne, 2013b;
Kalat, 2016).^1 Our introduction will be necessarily selective: we will look at
the brain from the perspective of cognitive approaches to biblical materials.
Another word of caution is due with regard to the nature of an anatomical
survey of the brain. Before the advent of modern neuroscience, usually
connected to the“neuron doctrine,”formulated by Santiago Ramón y Cajal
and others (Guillery, 2005; Glickstein, 2006), the brain had often been thought
of as an undifferentiated mass of tissue. More recently, however, a misleading
simplification in the opposite direction is even more widespread, that is, the
localization of human cognitive abilities or psychological traits in some spe-
cific brain structure. The truth is that whereas different parts of the brain can
perform very specific tasks, every aspect of human thought and behavior is
based on a network of cooperation involving several brain areas (cf. Mundale,
2001). Whenever we mention some specific function in connection with a part
of the brain in the following survey, it is always in the sense of the given area
contributing significantly to that function. The involvement of other parts of
the brain in a specific activity is always necessary and most of the time the
same area will play important roles in other processes, as well.
The human nervous system is divided into two main parts (Kalat, 2016,
pp. 66–70). Thecentral nervous systemincludes the brain and the spinal cord.
Theperipheral nervous systemincludes the somatic and autonomic systems:
the former brings commands to the muscles that perform voluntary motion
and carries information to the central nervous system about the body; the
latter, as its name suggests, takes care of automatic functions. The nervous
system can perform these tasks with the help of cells that are specialized in
carrying information: these are nerve cells, also called neurons (England &
Wakely, 2006, pp. 6–8; Kalat, 2016, pp. 16–23). Neurons come in many shapes
and sizes but for our purposes it is sufficient to capture their essential features
(see Figure 3.1). The cell body (soma) of a neuron performs the usual func-
tions of human cells: it contains genetic information (within its nucleus),
produces energy (with the help of the mitochondria) and manufactures
(^1) For an excellent introduction to the human brain with illustrations, see http://www.brain-
maps.com/index.html (accessed on January 29, 2016).
The Human Brain: A Guided Tour 51