3.4 The Brain and Spinal Cord — Your Brain Is Rewriting Itself Right Now | Psychology 2e

From a 3-foot iron rod through Phineas Gage's skull to a patient who could learn new skills but forget them instantly, this lesson unpacks how the brain and spinal cord actually work — and what happens when they don't. Drawn from Section 3.4 of OpenStax Psychology 2e, the lesson traces the nervous system from the reflexes of the spinal cord all the way up through the cortex's four lobes, the limbic system, and the brainstem. Along the way, real clinical cases put every major concept in sharp, human focus. In this video: • Spinal cord reflexes: how the cord bypasses the brain to save precious milliseconds when you touch a hot stove • Neuroplasticity and the case of Bob Woodruff — how the brain rewires itself through new synapses, pruning, and even neurogenesis • Split-brain research: what severing the corpus callosum reveals about the left and right hemispheres • The four cortical lobes, including Broca's and Wernicke's areas for language and the distorted body map of the somatosensory cortex • Phineas Gage and the prefrontal cortex — and why the textbook warns that his story was shaped by 19th-century scientific bias • Henry Molaison (H.M.) and how removing the hippocampus proved explicit and procedural memory are stored in different places • Brain imaging tools compared — CT, PET, MRI, fMRI, and EEG — and what each one is best suited to reveal #OpenStax #Psychology #Neuroscience #BrainAnatomy #Neuroplasticity OpenStax Content adapted from "OpenStax Psychology 2e", by OpenStax licensed under CC BY 4.0. Content based on Web Version: Apr 23, 2026. Read the textbook online https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology-2e Music first girl talking to me. by ikkun (ex. Barradeen) | https://soundcloud.com/ikkunwastaken Royalty Free Music by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US