Check & Reflect

We began this module with a map and end it with a little more self-knowledge. You can now name the brain's major territories: the thinking cortex spread across the top, the older deep centres that handle feeling (the amygdala) and memory (the hippocampus) beneath it, the cerebellum keeping movement smooth at the back, and the stalk below tending the rhythms you never chose. You have traced how a feeling does not stay in the head but travels outward through the self-governing autonomic system, revving the body up or winding it down, and how that bodily state loops back to colour the feeling itself. And you have watched, in your own knee and your own blinking eye, the reflex arc take its swift shortcut through the spinal cord, acting before the thinking mind is even told.

None of this was meant only as information. The quiet aim of the whole module was to change how you inhabit an ordinary moment, to let you feel the pulse settle under a slow breath, or catch your body flinching a half-second ahead of your fear. That noticing is the real skill. Take the short check below to confirm the ideas have landed, then turn to the reflection. The mind you are learning to observe has been with you all along; you are simply beginning to watch it work.

1. The wrinkled outer layer of the brain, most associated with reasoning, language, and recognising a friend, is the:

2. Those distinctive folds of the brain's outer surface mainly serve to:

3. The densely packed region tucked at the back, above the neck, that smooths timing and balance is the:

4. The branch of the nervous system that runs the heart, digestion, and other functions without conscious control is called the:

5. When the body revs up for urgent action, heart racing and pupils widening, which setting is active?

6. One reliable everyday way to nudge the body toward its calming setting is to:

7. In a reflex arc, the signal takes a shortcut through the:

8. The correct order of events in a protective reflex, such as pulling back from a hot pan, is: