Cramming for a test can make even the brightest minds feel like a pile of mush: Words start blending together, and after scanning pages and pages, it can be tough to tell when concentration falters and thoughts begin to drift. But the good folks at Open Colleges have managed to make neurology engaging and easy-to-process with a cool clickable map of the brain.
The colourful concept actually originated as a standard blog post and study guide for the Australian online education resource. But InformED editor Andre Pinantoan thought the info could be made more interesting with a bit of visual magic. Within a month, he and his colleagues completed the research and organisation — and after three, they’d designed and developed a program based on it.
Thanks to their public site, anyone with an interest in what’s happening inside our noggins can click around and learn more about that oh-so-complex three pound mass between our ears. Wow your pals with knowledge about the neo-cortex, which handles senses, spatial awareness, and motor skills; say a silent thanks for your temporal lobes, which keep your memories safe; give a wink to your eye fields, which register visual info in milliseconds. You can even explore neurons and the limbic system.
Just pretend you’re Martin Short and this is prep for an adventure into Innerspace. Try it out here. [PopSci]