Who is this important little guy?

by

 

homunculusWho, or what is this? Why are we talk­ing about him?

Let us give you a clue: his name in Homunculus.

Expla­na­tion: The cor­ti­cal Homuncu­lus is a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the human body, locat­ed with­in the brain. It is a neu­ro­log­i­cal “map” of the anatom­i­cal divi­sions of the body. And you can eas­i­ly notice which areas are over­rep­re­sent­ed, indi­cat­ing the most sen­si­tive areas in our bod­ies (because there are more nerves and because our brain devotes more resources to process infor­ma­tion from those nerves)

brainmap_HomunculusSee more detailed expla­na­tion Here.

 

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Comments

  2. eleanor says

    that is hilar­i­ous! — I was mild­ly appre­hen­sive about whether or not they would omit cer­tain body parts — par­tic­u­lar­ly if it was for kids to see — but they cun­ning­ly glossed over the issue!

  4. avk rao says

    The fun­ny face looks like a fun­ny fig­ure from AESOPES FABLES OR ARABIANNIGHTS
    BUT MAY REPRESENTA STAGE IN EVOLUTIN OFMAN BETWEN APE AND HOUS ERECTUS‑A V K RAO

  8. Rodrigo Fuenzalida says

    This ugly and deformed man is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the degree of sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the sur­faces of our body, in means of the amount of cor­tex ded­i­cat­ed to each. The most big­ger body parts are the mor sen­si­tive, like the lips and hands. The small­er ones are the ons that require the less sen­si­tiv­i­ty of all, like our legs and back.

  11. FreeBee says

    Now THAT explains why kiss­ing is so effec­tive. See the size of the mouth, espe­cial­ly the lips.
    Touch­ing a fel­low human being, by design, is some­thing plea­sur­able, because we need that for repro­duc­tion. Kiss­ing might be con­sid­ered just anoth­er form of touch­ing, but its effect is so much stronger than that of most oth­er activities.

  13. Beachgirl says

    The homuncu­lus is also com­mon­ly used to describe the dis­tort­ed human fig­ure drawn to reflect the rel­a­tive space our body parts occu­py on the somatosen­so­ry cor­tex (sen­so­ry homuncu­lus) and the motor cor­tex (motor homuncu­lus). The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sen­so­ry neu­rons than oth­er parts of the body, so the homuncu­lus has cor­re­spond­ing­ly dis­tort­ed­ly large lips, hands, feet, and gen­i­tals. Well known in the field of neu­rol­o­gy, this is also com­mon­ly called ‘the lit­tle man inside the brain.’

  14. Beachgirl says

    I saw the same ani­ma­tion last night on a show called “In the Liv­ing Body” on the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic channel.

  18. LuiJirou says

    Would the size of some of Mr. Homuncu­lus’ body parts change with age, skill lev­el, or pro­fes­sion? Some­how, I pic­ture Norm Abram hav­ing larg­er hands and Gar­ri­son Keil­lor hav­ing a big­ger mouth. Sor­ry, Mr. Keil­lor. No pun intended.

  19. Alvaro says

    Indeed, it would. A pianist would devote a larg­er area to receiv­ing infor­ma­tion from the fin­gers, and so on. That is the kind of research that Merzenich ad oth­ers did with mon­keys, and saw clear­ly that effect. With humans there is of course less infor­ma­tion, but enough data to sug­gest how it applies too

  20. JANICE says

    fun­ny, enter­tain­ing and def­i­nite­ly edu­ca­tion­al… no won­der my hands feel big,tee-hee…

  23. adriana says

    it is Pen­field­’s Homuncu­lus it is an schemat­ic design of the cor­ti­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the motor area in the pari­etal lobe. I saw it in physiology.