Central Core

The central core describes the five regions of the brain that are present in all vertebrate creatures and are responsible for the most basic and essential biological and sensory life processes. It is comprised of the thalamus (sensory information processing), medulla (breathing, sleep, heart rate), pons (dreaming, sleep), cerebellum (movement, equilibrium), and reticular formation (stimuli attention, alertness). You can remember this by using the sentence "The Most Primal Cause and Reason" to recall the first letters of the five regions of the central core.