Understanding Brain Anatomy: Key Structures for Registry Success

Brain anatomy questions are all over the registry exam. The good news? Once you know what you're looking at, they're pretty straightforward. Here's what matters.

Start With the Big Four

Before you stress about tiny structures, make sure you can identify the main lobes on any view:

Frontal lobe: Front of the brain, anterior to the central sulcus. Handles thinking, planning, movement.

Parietal lobe: Between the central sulcus and the back. Processes sensory info and spatial awareness.

Temporal lobe: Down by the sides, near your temples. Memory and hearing live here.

Occipital lobe: Back of the brain. All about vision.

Get these locked in first. Everything else builds from there.

Follow the CSF Flow

The ventricular system shows up on tons of images. Know the pathway:

Lateral ventricles → Foramen of Monro → Third ventricle → Cerebral aqueduct → Fourth ventricle → Out through foramina of Luschka and Magendie → Subarachnoid space

Learn what each ventricle looks like in axial, sagittal, and coronal views. They're usually pretty obvious once you know what to look for.

Basal Ganglia Aren't That Hard

These deep gray matter structures look complicated but follow a pattern:

Caudate nucleus: Curves around following the lateral ventricle. C-shaped.

Putamen: Sits lateral to the internal capsule.

Globus pallidus: Right next to the putamen, more medial.

Thalamus: Big egg-shaped structure. The brain's relay station.

The caudate and putamen together = striatum. The putamen and globus pallidus together = lentiform nucleus. Just memorize those combos and you're good.

White Matter Tracts You Need to Know

Corpus callosum: The big highway connecting left and right hemispheres. From front to back it's: rostrum, genu, body, splenium. You'll see this on every sagittal brain image.

Internal capsule: White matter pathway squeezed between the thalamus and basal ganglia. Carries motor and sensory fibers. Strokes here are bad news because so many important pathways run through it.

Don't Forget the Back

The cerebellum has two hemispheres connected by the vermis in the middle. Easy to spot on any image - it's that wrinkly structure in the posterior fossa.

The brainstem has three parts top to bottom: midbrain, pons, medulla. The pons is the bulge on the front of the brainstem. The medulla tapers down and becomes the spinal cord at the foramen magnum.

How to Actually Study This

Staring at textbook diagrams won't cut it. You need real MRI images. Look at normal brain scans every day. Axial, sagittal, coronal - all of them. Point to structures until you can do it without thinking. There are free labeled anatomy atlases online. Use them.

And here's the key - don't just memorize locations. Understand what things do. Why does an internal capsule stroke cause paralysis? Why do occipital lobe lesions mess up vision? When you connect structure to function, it all makes way more sense.

Need more practice? Check out our Brain Anatomy Study Guide with labeled images and quizzes.

Written by Pass MR