Lab Rats In Lab Coats

Lab Rats In Lab Coats

The Midbrain

You can think of the midbrain like a set of highways with factories and a lot of service areas in the vicinity.

The highways are multiple descending and ascending pathways that connect the brain with the body and brain parts to one another. Some of the descending tracts include the crus cerebri, which are part of the corticospinal tract. There is the rubrospinal tract, the tectospinal tract, and the medial longitudinal fasciculus. Ascending fibers include the medial lemniscus, the trigeminal lemniscus, spinal lemniscus, and the lateral lemniscus.

While the factories are dopamine-, GABA-, serotonin-, and norepinephrine-producing areas like the pars compacta, pars reticularis, dorsal raphe nuclei, and the locus ceruleus, respectively. These are very important for myriad of brain functions and they project (i.e. send their products) to extensive places throughout the CNS.

The service areas, those restaurants and gas stations you find along the road include the colliculi, motor & parasympathetic nuclei for 3rd cranial nerve, nucleus for 4th cranial nerve, and some of 5th cranial nerves, in addition to the red nucleus, periaqueductal gray matter, and pretectal nuclei (which are involved in orchestrating bilateral pupil constriction).

It's a busy area where a lot of connections and axons pass through it and either descend or ascend to multiple areas, and a lot of essential nuclei reside in it. In this regard, it's more like a city downtown than a highway.

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421 viewsHaidar A. Fahad, May 10 at 21:30

You can think of the midbrain like a set of highways with factories and a lot of service areas in the vicinity.

The highways are multiple descending and ascending pathways that connect the brain with the body and brain parts to one another. Some of the descending tracts include the crus cerebri, which are part of the corticospinal tract. There is the rubrospinal tract, the tectospinal tract, and the medial longitudinal fasciculus. Ascending fibers include the medial lemniscus, the trigeminal lemniscus, spinal lemniscus, and the lateral lemniscus.

While the factories are dopamine-, GABA-, serotonin-, and norepinephrine-producing areas like the pars compacta, pars reticularis, dorsal raphe nuclei, and the locus ceruleus, respectively. These are very important for myriad of brain functions and they project (i.e. send their products) to extensive places throughout the CNS.

The service areas, those restaurants and gas stations you find along the road include the colliculi, motor & parasympathetic nuclei for 3rd cranial nerve, nucleus for 4th cranial nerve, and some of 5th cranial nerves, in addition to the red nucleus, periaqueductal gray matter, and pretectal nuclei (which are involved in orchestrating bilateral pupil constriction).

It's a busy area where a lot of connections and axons pass through it and either descend or ascend to multiple areas, and a lot of essential nuclei reside in it. In this regard, it's more like a city downtown than a highway.

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