what the brain does?

[Didier A. Depireux]

Profile account <Profile at reading.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi

> I am doing some research on the brain and would like to know what persentage
> of the brain is used for certain tasks. For example I have heard that 70% of
> the brain is used for vision processing. Obviously I am not looking for

We are finding out that a good part of the brain (by which I assume you mean
cortex) is multisensory. People tend to call an area visual if they record
from it and find responses to visual stimuli, but typically, recordings are
hard enough and money scarce enough (and experiments complex enough) that
rarely does one lab study an area with respect to different modalities
(visual, somatosensory, vestibular, auditory, etc). 
So using the above number you mention, 50% of the brain is visual, 50% is
auditory, 50% is motor,  50 % is somatosensory, and about 90% is vestibular. 

						Didier

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