Midbrain
One thing I’ll grant the pons and midbrain is that it’s the two of them that control your voluntary eye movement, which is a pretty legit job. So if right now you move your eyes around, that’s you doing something specifically with your pons and midbrain - Tim Urban
image by: The Science of Kindness: It’s Not Easy Being Nice
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Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future
The midbrain is dealing with an even bigger identity crisis than the pons. You know a brain part is going through some s..t when almost all its functions are already another brain part’s thing. In the case of the midbrain, it deals with vision, hearing, motor control, alertness, temperature control, and a bunch of other things that other people in the brain already do. The rest of the brain doesn’t seem very into the midbrain either, given that they created a ridiculously uneven “forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain” divide that intentionally isolates the midbrain all by itself while everyone else hangs out.
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The Science of Kindness: It's Not Easy Being Nice
What you end up with is a cobbled-together patchwork of new additions on top of old designs or a Kluge (the title of Marcus’s book). And the central point of the book is that our brains are Kluges (a patched-together solution for a problem). “The human midbrain, for example, exists literally on top of the ancient hindbrain and the forebrain is built on top of both,” he writes, and now all these parts have to work together. The “Kluge” brain is problematic. Marcus explains how this has consequences on how our brains actually do “brain stuff,” like remembering things, having emotions, believing things, using language, and experiencing pleasure.
Articles of Interest
Blogging--It's Good for You
Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.
Midbrain dopamine neurons can retain short-term memories
Dopamine neurons in the midbrain are involved in higher cognitive functions in addition to their role in the reward system
