Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

You could think of neurologists as map makers.

They plot out the brain's diverse domains and territories,

from the features and activities that define them to the roadways that connect them, to the boundaries

that delineate them. But they're finding the brain doesn't think the way you think it does. That's next.

Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication supported by the Simon's Foundation to enhance public understanding of science.

Let's break out our brain maps.

Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex.

It's the seat of judgment.

Behind that lies the motor cortex. It's responsible for planning

and coordinating movement. To the sides are the temporal lobes. They're crucial for memory and

processing emotion. Above the temporal lobes sits the somatosensory cortex, and behind the temporal

lobes, you'll find the visual cortex. Lisa Feldman-Barritt is a psychologist at Northeastern

University. Scientists approach the brain the way old-fashioned map makers used to approach making map. So in the 13th, 14, 15th century,

mapmakers would make maps that would accentuate the land, a king owned, and make everything else smaller.

And I'm not saying that scientists do this literally with the brain, but what they do is they parse the brain in terms of what they're interested in. And so you can get a single brain region, what they're

interested in psychologically or mentally or behaviorally. And so what you can do, you get

it in a single brain region that has a bunch of different names, or now a brain network. You take

the brain and you parse it into networks,

as if they're Lego blocks, as if there are firm boundaries there, which there are not.

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