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Use your ideas about factors that affect thinking, decision making, and memory to draw conclusions about cognition and what it means to be a...

There are several brain-based factors that influence the way we make decisions and think about things. Scientists have begun to isolate brain areas involved in different types of decisions using patients who have suffered injuries to one section of their brains. For example, scientists have found that the front part of the frontal lobe is involved in decisions that involve abstract reasoning, as this region of the brain controls planning, organization, and the so-called "executive functions" (the ability to decide on and execute a task). Decisions that involve concrete reasoning involve the back of the frontal lobe. Other decisions that involve integrating visual information are processed through the parietal lobe, which processes sensory information. When part of the brain is involved in a decision, it shows increased activity in the neurons in that region. Memory is processed in an area of the brain called the limbic system, which includes the amygdala, hippocampus, and other structures. Damage to the hippocampus, for example, can result in anterograde amnesia, or the inability of people to form new memories.


This means that cognition and many of the qualities we associate with being human are, in reality, based on the firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. The sense we make of these cognitive functions is in part what makes us human and adds to our individuality.

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