brain+start+ups

You and your team are a small start-up company that recently figured out how to grow 2 small parts of the brain in laboratory conditions (don't get caught up in the details, just revel in your genius.) Your task now is to determine which 2 parts of the brain you are going to grow and who you are going to market them to particular populations (the two parts can be unrelated...insomuch as that is possible...) and why people would make these purchases. What medical or social need are you meeting? **What function does each part of the brain have?** Your job of course as a start-up is to make money for the investors who have backed you thus far. Sure, you want to grow an entire new brain for children with microcephaly, but you don't have that capacity and something that impacts between 1 in 30,000 to 1 in 250,000 newborns worldwide isn't going to please your investors...

Each group will present your 2 parts of the brain, who you are going to market them to and why people are going to buy them. The groups not presenting are listening as investors, each investor group has 1million USD to distribute to groups that they think are worthy investments. Each group will decide how to divide up their 1m among other groups (you can not give your own group any $). The group that gets the most investment $$$ will get a small non-monetary prize.

The purpose of this exercise is to have you examine both structure and function. It is not enough to say that "all people want better memories so they will purchase new hippocampi" I totally made up that plurality. It has to be worth brain surgery. It doesn't have to be a medical condition, but it might be medical, it could be psychological, it could be aesthetic, it cannot be total science fiction like seeing in the dark, time travel, etc.

Parts of the brain: (same as need to know for quiz tomorrow) Amygdala Cerebellum Corpus Callosum Reticular Formation Pituitary Gland Thalamus Pons Hippocampus Hypothalamus motor cortex sensory cortex Broca's area <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #545454; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Wernicke's area

frontal lobe temporal lobe parietal lobe occipital lobe