The primary cortex is responsible for higher brain functions, including processing sensory inputs such as sound, sight, and touch. It also controls body movement and emotional responses. Each cortical region receives sensory information and interprets its meaning. The primary cortex for each sense is located in different areas of the brain. The motor and somatosensory cortex are located in the central region of the brain, while the orbitofrontal cortex is located in the frontal lobe. The primary cortex regions do not perform sensory tasks entirely on their own and rely on other parts of the body to detect sensory information.
The primary cortex constitutes several regions of the outer gray layer of tissue in the human brain that are responsible for higher brain functions mainly involving the processing of sensory inputs. These include the primary auditory, visual, and somatosensory cortex regions responsible for interpreting sound, sight, and tactile sensory information, as well as the primary gustatory and olfactory cortex regions that interpret the senses of taste and smell. Higher brain functions controlled by sections of the primary cortex of the cerebrum also include the orbitofrontal cortex which regulates emotional responses and controls anger, as well as the primary motor cortex which controls body movement.
Each cortical region of the brain receives sensory information from other parts of the brain, other parts of the human nervous system or organs and interprets its meaning. The primary regions of the cortex for the senses of sight, smell, and sound are fairly small regions of the entire brain overall, and are each located in distinctly different areas. The visual cortex is one of the largest areas of the primary cortex and exists in the back of the brain as the trailing edge of the occipital lobe. The primary cortex for auditory information is located in the temporal lobe behind the ears, where the right auditory cortex receives sound information from the left hemisphere and vice versa. The olfactory cortex for smell exists within the anterior region of the brain known as the frontal lobe, and the gustatory cortex for taste is close to it in the temporal lobe.
The motor cortex and somatosensory cortex constitute different structural shapes and occupy different regions of the brain than the areas of the primary cortex for the dominant senses. Control of movement and tactile sense is regulated by two broad bands of cortical tissue that extend across the central region of the brain within the central sulcus and parietal lobe. The orbitofrontal cortex which is known to play a role in emotion regulation is located along a lower, protected section of the frontal lobe of the brain.
Although primary cortex regions of the brain structure are vital to normal daily life, they do not perform sensory tasks entirely on their own. For example, the somatosensory cortex, which processes tactile information, maps directly to sensory signals across the entire surface of the human body in a complex structure called somatotopy. The auditory cortex relies on sound transmitted from the ears to convert it into speech, and the olfactory bulb, or region of the cortex, depends on the 40,000,000 olfactory receptors in the human nose to detect odors.
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