The funky chicken in your brain

Inside your brain, in everyone's brain, there are spaces called ventricles where there is nothing but cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). CSF is important because it provides cushioning for your brain. Your brain is actually floating in your skull on a thin layer of CSF. The ventricles can be hard to visualize even when you're familiar with the concept, and its pretty rare to find a good representation of all the ventricles drawn out. But I'm hanging out in the Neuro ICU right now, so it shouldn't be surprising that I found one. The two c-shaped parts are the lateral ventricles, the part that looks like a chicken head is the third ventricle and the part that looks like the chicken's body is the fourth ventricle. To help you visualize, the third ventricle is basically smack dab in the middle of your brain and the fourth ventricle sits right at the top of your spinal cord, in between your brain stem and cerebellum. As I said, its rare to find a good representation of the ventricle system, but this is the only one I've seen that made it clear that what we in fact have is a funky chicken in our brains.