With the lobes of the brain, we saw that different cognitive processes are located in different areas. However, sometimes, there are differences in cognitive processes across the hemispheres. For example, language tends to be left hemisphere dominant. Most of the areas involved in language processing will be found in the left hemisphere, and there are very few in the right. These differences between the hemispheres we refer to as lateralization. And just as an example, we're going to look at two areas in the brain: Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Broca's area is involved in speech production and is found in the frontal lobe, whereas Wernicke's area, part of the temporal lobe, is involved in language comprehension. These black lines are trying to indicate that these two areas are intimately connected. I'm sure you can imagine, the production of speech and the ability to understand what's being spoken to you are going to be linked processes.

However, the takeaway I want you to get here is just that different functions are localized to specialized areas of the brain, and there is not always going to be balance between the right and left hemispheres. However, I will dispel the whole right-left hemisphere nonsense that you find in pop science right now. That's all garbage. Don't listen to any of that. Just know that there are differences in the cognitive processes between the hemispheres. However, they are not nearly as pronounced as pop science would have you believe. Another way to look at the cerebral cortex is to divide it into sensory, motor, and association areas. Essentially, in this model, we think of sensory areas as receiving and processing sensory information. These will be areas like the visual, auditory, and somatosensory cortices, that's the plural of cortex. And you will find them, you know, in and around these regions of the brain here in pink.

Now, the motor areas process voluntary motor movements, and these are going to be processed in the primary motor cortex, which you can see has been highlighted in green for us right here. Notice that it's parallel to the primary somatosensory cortex, right here in dark pink. Hopefully, it comes as no surprise that the area that receives information from the body would need to be intimately connected with the area that sends signals back to the body for movements. Basically, the rest of the brain that is not a sensory area or a motor area is considered an association area. These association areas are basically there to extract meaning from the sensory information we receive. To some of you, this might come as no surprise. To others, this will be kind of a groundbreaking idea, but what you perceive as the world is not real. It's just a construct in your brain. So, things you are seeing, you're not really seeing, your brain is interpreting the signals from photons bouncing off of it to construct an image of it. Essentially, these association areas are there to take what comes from the sensory areas and make sense of it and generate your reality. Now, with that, let's flip the page.