Best neurology books according to redditors
We found 147 Reddit comments discussing the best neurology books. We ranked the 71 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 147 Reddit comments discussing the best neurology books. We ranked the 71 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
That would be highly unusual and unlikely. I won't say it's literally impossible, but there's absolutely no reason to make such an untenable assumption when a clear and solid motivating factor, such as in this case, the separation from a close partner, exists.
"LSD, which is widely abused, does not appear to be addictive." -source
"In contrast to many other abused drugs, hallucinogens
do not engender drug dependence or addiction and are
not considered to be reinforcing substances (O’Brien,
2001)." -source
"There are no literature reports of successful attempts to
train animals to self-administer classical hallucinogens, an
animal model predictive of abuse liability, indicating that
these substances do not possess the necessary pharmacology to either initiate or maintain dependence. Hoffmeister
(1975) has reported that LSD actually had negative
reinforcing properties in rhesus monkeys trained in an
avoidance task." -source
"Several other classes of drugs are categorized as drugs of abuse but rarely produce compulsive use. These include psychedelic agents, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)" -source
Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!
Here are your smile-ified links:
https://smile.amazon.com/Fast-Facts-Stroke-Care-Nursing-ebook/dp/B00KAZVPZ4
---
^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot
Lazy citations:
I like this question.
Beginner:
Student:
Expert:
If you want the standard sequence of Neuroscience textbooks, there is a rough ordering of 3 common books. Each are very comprehensive and more than you would likely be able to read cover to cover, but they get more sophisticated and comprehensive as you go. The last one specifically is essentially the bible of neuroscience and you will be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive coverage of any of the topics outside a specialised textbooks or research papers.
These books will cover the general overview of neuroanatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology but if you want to go further in depth, there are more advanced books for each of those and dozens of other subfields.
I would specifically recommend Nolte - The human brain: an introduction to its functional anatomy as an exceptional example of a specialised text. Unfortunately, I do not recall the neurpharmacology text that I used, but it was very good too. I shall look it up and get back to you! For a more general introduction to pharmacology, the standard text is Rand and Dale - Pharmacology.
I cannot more strongly recommend Steven W. Smith's The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing.
Every chapter is freely available as a PDF on the website.
Everyone who is interested in EEG/ECoG/LFP/single-unit research should absolutely read this book.
Steve Luck's Introduction to the Event Related Potential Technique is great, and will really help you to set up a top-quality ERP lab, but the DSP book really teaches you what happens to the signals you're recording.
If you want to get deeper into the underlying physiology of EEG, I'd recommend Electric Fields of the Brain by Nunez & Srinivasan.
You'd also be happy reading Buzsaki's Rhythms of the Brain.
I think the modern classic on ERPs is considered to be Steve Luck's book. I can vouch that it's an excellent book.
I can't help you with non-event-related EEG, though.
kandel
bear
purves
martin
Each of these books is aimed at a different audience, but this should get you started.
I'm not a chemist; I'm currently studying ChemE at university. I'm also the "science mod" over on /r/trees, so I think I can help out a bit with this one.
The science behind cannabis and how it works is extremely interesting, but it won't help you with 99% of Biochemistry.
Everything we know about cannabis can be learned pretty quickly, provided you have the backgrounds in chemistry, biology, and preferably a bit of pharmacology.
What you can is do is study drugs and their functions as a whole to supplement and enhance your studies in biochemistry; I know that it's granted me a new appreciation for the human body and the processes that regulate it. These fields are vast and expanding at an astonishing rate.
The field of pharmacology is huge, but in a nutshell you can break it into pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. They focus on effects and the relations between dosage and response (dose response curves, etc.) as well as the mechanisms through which the drug is processed and how the drug passes through the body, respectively.
In short, pharmacokinetics studies what the body does to a drug, while pharmacodynamics studies what the drug does to your body.
As a Biochemistry major, these topics will likely be right up your alley. You'll still have to do the mundane, but perhaps some background along these lines will provide you with a new perspective on the processes you are studying in class.
If this sounds like your thing, I'd recommend the following text, provided you already have a good grip on molecular biology and a little electrochemistry: Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience
If you like this text or you just want something to supplement it, Caltech, easily one of the top research universities for this field, offers a course taught by Dr. Henry Lester via Coursera, here.
It's a highly informative course that pairs very well with the text I linked above. You'll touch on everything from drug addiction to recreational drugs to the different receptors and how they are activated.
It's not active right now and I'm not sure when the next session will be, but you can go onto Coursera and watch Professor Lester's lectures which are, by far, the most integral part of the course. I went through it last session (January - February) and I was very satisfied with both the material and the way it was presented.
Tl;dr: You can supplement your classroom material with all sorts of interesting studies related to drugs, but if you're not interested in the material you're studying in class at all, it may be time to rethink your field. You can't tie everything to drugs, but you can use the study of drugs to enhance your appreciation for the "macro" systems you're studying.
"Neurology" is a medical discipline, i.e. a department you would find in a hospital, so that would not be appropriate for your case. "Neuroscience", on the other hand, is the name of the scientific study, which is what you should look into, but overall that is too broad of a field.
For what you're trying to learn, I'd just start directly diving into neuropharmacology. Any good resource should give you enough of an overview before things get more complicated; perhaps having a review of high school science might be good, but not necessary.
Here's a recommendation for a good reference textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273
Let me explain why I brought up dyslexia as a common comorbidity of having problems expressing yourself and adhd, but first lets talk about language. I will get back to dyslexia and ADHD. Do note while my post is long, I provide lots of links to pictures.
I am going to be using a lot of images from a biology textbook called Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavorial, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. Mostly from Chapter 19 which deals with language, while I am going to provide specific images you may find it useful to read the visual summary if you want more info.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html
-----
 
 
Put simply to do language you are going to use multiple regions of the brain together as a circuit. See here
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/vs1905.png
You are going to use areas in the back of the brain tied to vision, then you are going to pass that information to a multisensory processing area where your brain combines the senses and figures out what to do (aka you are forming the visual images in your mind before you think of the words that correspond to the visual images). You are then going to pass the information once again to a multisensory processing area but this area is more auditory based, followed by you passing the information to a specific area of the frontal lobe that is very close to the prefrontal areas which is tied to language, but also attention, sequencing of data, and response inhibition (stopping impulsivity) but also activation (aka release the brake and now go). This information is then passed to premotor and supplementary motor areas which is then passed to the motor areas. And during all these steps there are inbetween fine tunning by the subcortical brain areas such as the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.
Now I was trying to explain all of that without using medical terms but here is the names for those brain areas
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-07-0.jpg
 
 
And here is a diagram that compares speaking a heard word and speaking a word you read off a piece of paper. When you are composing inside of your head without mental feedback and you are imaging what you are going to say your thought process looks more like speaking a word you read off a piece of paper for you use more of the visual areas to visualize in your mind's eye what you are going to do and say.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-09-0.jpg
 
 
-------
Now we know things like head injuries and lesions to specific brain injuries to specific brain injuries can all disrupt speech but if the area is localized to specific regions you may only have some problems with certain aspects of language. When language problems are caused by some form of trauma we call this aphasia.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Table-19-01-0.jpg
 
 
And people with different types of aphasia may have different problems. Like a person with expressive aphasia may know what they want to say and they can draw what they want to say but they can't find the words for it. While people with receptive aphasia have problems understanding language. Now receptive aphasia can be more than this where people accidentally skip words in their explanations that are crucial in the sentence, or they have anomia where they know what they want to say (the word is on the tip of their tongue) but they can't remember it, or they do an unintentional word subsitution subsituting another word with a similar sound or meaning, sometimes they mess up not the grammar of the sentence but the word tense, or use the wrong pronoun (like her vs she)
 
 
Now all of these issues I described were studied in people with head injuries. That said we see much the same pattern of behavior with many different types of disorders, one of which is autism, but another of which and is completely separate is dyslexia.
Now with dyslexia many brain regions are implicated and some of them are the same areas I have shown above
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html (go to slide 6)
In many forms of dyslexia you are not using the back of the brain areas tied with the early visual information which is passed to the angular gyrus which is passed to the wernicke area. See picture
http://www.hoperesourcecentre.com/wp-content/uploads/Brain-Illustration-CellfieldCanada.jpg
And you are trying to compensate for all of this information with actually using more of the frontal lobe to compensate for these areas. Well the frontal lobe is not designed to do such a thing its arrangement and types of nerve cells are different.
 
 
Now its not just that picture I showed you, its also some of the subcortical areas such as these areas I am about to post here
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-15-0.jpg
Involving the thalamus and an area known as the pulvinar, as well as certain areas of the brainstem, and certain areas of the cerebellum mainly vermis 6 and vermis 7 (often labeled VI and VII)
http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/156522/fnins-09-00296-HTML/image_m/fnins-09-00296-g002.jpg
These parts of the cerebellum are used for multiple functions but they are often called the occular motor areas of the cerebellum. They are also involved with the control of attention and shifting smoothing from one object to another for one of the purposes of the cerebellum is to "fill in the blanks" between gaps. Imagine you were watch a film but instead of watching a video you were seeing slide by slide, well the cerebellum along with the thalamus and brain stem regions are used in the predicition of what is going to happen next and smooth movements of the eyes, while other areas in the frontal lobe are more involved with figuring out these things are important so why don't we set this as the new priority of what to look at and the rest of the brain figures out how best to move there.
https://kin450-neurophysiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg/393831860/480x346/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg
 
 
Now if you have not probably figured out there is a connection to all of these brain regions with ADHD. Some ADHD people have these issues, but if you have these issues you are also more likely to have ADHD.
If you look at the previous chapter 18 of Biological Psychology you will see this picture on slide 6
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-16-0.jpg
There are two attention networks here. The top attention network is known as the frontal parietal control network where it controls and and it also modulates the dorsal attention/perception network. While a second bottom network in orange involves the frontal lobe and connects to areas shared both with the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe where they meet and the surrounding areas, this bottom attention network is more with detecting new things and novel things, while the top network keeps you on track and looks for the goals held within working memory to solve the problems.
If you have not noticed the same areas of the brain that make it hard to express onceself with language, are also the same areas that are common in dyslexia, and are the intersection of two of key networks tied with attention (now there are more than those two networks I just showed you with ADHD but now you understand why there is a connection.)
(Now most of pictures I linked to came from Biological Psychology by Breedlove and Watson, this is an introductory college text meant for undergraduate use. It will not go into all the stuff involving the brain with attention and such, other books made by the same publishing company (Sinaeur) but done by other authors are better if you are mainly wanting to talk about attention instead of language such as
Sensation and Perception
Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases
Dale Purves Neuroscience 5th Edition
And Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience
I'd go with Purves' textbook or Bear's book. Both are very good introductory books. If you want something more difficult, try Principles of Neural Science by Kandel or (even more difficult) Fundamental Neuroscience by Larry Squire.
EEG analysis is a bit of an art form and mastering it just comes with experience, trial and error, and really knowing your particular dataset and aims. I use Matlab with the EEGLAB toolbox for ERPs and FieldTrip for time frequency analysis.
There are so many different steps, it's definitely not just a matter of pushing a button and getting a nice p-value out at the other side. I'd recommend getting your hands on this book in the first instance.
Hi there,
Some suggestions for ya!
The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch. Minimal neuroscience background required, but the more you know, the more you'll derive from this book. Focused on illustrating how complex networks can manifest behaviour (and consciousness). Outside of Koch's regular pursuits as an electrophysiology, he worked alongside Francis Crick (ya that one), to study arousal and consciousness. It's a fantastic read, and it's quite humbling.
Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Written for neuroscientists and engineers as an introductory textbook into network dynamics, oscillations, and behaviour. One of my favorite books in the field, but it can also be the most challenging.
Treatise of Man by Rene Descarte. Personal favorite, simply because it highlights how far we've come (e.g. pineal gland, pain, and animal spirits).
Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux provides the fantastic realization that "you are your synapse". Great circuit/network book written with a lot of psychological and philosophical considerations.
Finally...
Physical control of the mind--towards of psychocivilized society by the one and only Jose Delgado. (In)Famous for his experiments where he stopped a bull charging at him through amygdala stimulation- along with some similar experiments in people- Delgado skirts the line between good intention and mad science. It's too bad he's not taught more in history of neuroscience.
Supplementing prodrugs is probably better than AChE inhibition in the long term. ACh isn't transported directly back into cell bodies or synaptic vessicles and has to be broken down and reassembled inside the cell. I'd give you a citation, but I read it in Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience, Second Edition.
Those are really all you'll need; from there you will find things on your own or from professors.
I'm not sure about single-cell recordings but with EEG experiments (and most other electrophysiological measures i.e. EOG, EMG) the voltage (also known as electrical potential difference) recorded at a place on the scalp is measure of the potential for current to move from one place to another. So you need 2 electrodes to measure this: the one (or more) on the scalp, and the ground electrode which provides a common reference point for all the other electrodes.
As far as I recall the site for this can vary, I know the EEG system we use (Biosemi) has two electrodes that work as grounds that are placed on the scalp (they are slightly more complex than just ground electrodes though but don't ask me to explain how!).
In addition (and slightly confusingly) you have reference electrodes, which can be placed in a variety of places (earlobes, nose, mastoids, etc for EEG). The key property of a site for a reference electrode is that it must be unaffected by the source you are recording. It picks up all the internal and external noise and is then subtracted from the active electrodes to give a cleaner signal. Just like the normal electrodes the reference is measuring the potential difference between itself and the ground electrode.
Luck (2005) puts it like this: Signal = AG voltage - RG voltage
[A = Scalp electrode, R = Reference, & G = Ground electrode]
Hopefully that makes sense and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!
Source: I'm Cognitive Neuroscience PhD student, & Luck (2005) explains this pretty well.
Kandel is a very comprehensive neuroscience textbook with a lot of good figures as well as descriptions of experimental evidence. The most recent version came out just last year, so it is very current.
Purves also contains excellent figures but concepts are delivered on a more basic level, probably better suited for undergraduate/non-research perspective.
All right. I took that one on the side while working on my thesis. I'd say the tricky part is SPM; learning what to do, and when to do it. As I mentioned my data were already pre-processed yet I still struggled to understand what I actually had to do in SPM. It's a steep learning curve (at least it was for me) but I was doing it all via GUI since I'm wasn't that familiar with MATLAB prior to this. If you are, then scripting will make your days a lot easier.
This book is a good introduction to the underlying methods of fMRI, if you haven't already got that covered. Then I'd suggest you head over to the SPM8 website and try out their data sets and tutorials!
Neurobiology with Dr. Xu-Friedman was probably my favorite class, and he is probably my favorite professor. It can be a challenging class, but it's worth it if you enjoy neuroscience.
When I took it, we used Purves - Neuroscience 5th Edition .
The book is definitely needed, as it really helps to reinforce what they lecture on. If you're looking to get ahead before the semester begins, I think he follows the first few chapters tightly. If I recall correctly, he starts with some basic neuroanatomy, and then jumps into electrophysiology (similar to what you did in Bio 213 physiology lab, except in more detail) and receptor kinetics.
If Dr. Medler is also teaching it, she can be somewhat abrasive and difficult, but you can still do well if you go to lecture and pay attention.
For the type of graph (network) theory that is currently hot in neuroscience contexts, [Newman's book](http://www.amazon.com/Networks-An-Introduction-Mark-Newman/dp/0199206651
) is a great compendium (quite readable, but fairly comprehensive).
For bedside reading about mammalian cortical networks in particular, Networks of the Brain and Discovering the Human Connectome, both by Olaf Sporns, are well worth a look.
From there... it's already becoming a pretty big literature. If you have some specific areas of interest, I can do my best to point you to resources. Take my suggestions with a grain of salt, though... I'm a pure mathematician who kinda got seduced into applied maths... which means I probably don't know as much about either discipline as I should.
Well as for career options, there are a few typical ones you can go into: Academia (becoming a teacher/professor, often requires MS or PhD), Regulatory (working for the FDA or NIH, often requires PhD I believe, but I could be mistaken), and Research (can be in an academic setting or in industry, usually only requires a BS or MS). Just in case you want to start thinking about what you want to shoot for.
If you have no background in neuro, then I would suggest looking into a basic text book to start off with. I am currently going through this one in preparing to go back to grad school after being out of school for the last five years. You obviously don't need to memorize every detail right now, but familiarizing yourself with the basic concepts/terminology will help if you decide you want to dig deeper.
Here is a thread with some more suggestions to get you started.
It is only natural for researchers with vested interests in different levels of analysis - in this case, more abstract computational models that ignore the molecular and subcellular levels of detail, even the cellular level entirely (with point process neuronal models, for example) - to be opposed to so much funding going into the HBP, which inherently is geared towards simulating even the smallest functionally relevant level of analysis (viz., the molecular). This open letter is a window into the general phenomenon of competing visions and paradigms, only amplified because the stakes are so much higher (1.2 Bn Euro higher, to be exact).
On the one hand, I agree that more independent review would be helpful in order to stop some of the more un-scientific moves that the HBP has been taking in terms of letting go of people who do not "toe the line", as outlined here. On the other hand, there would be a downside to independent review as well, in that ideological differences from the reviewers may unnecessarily stifle the project. This is a problem with the reviewing process in most journals, in fact, so in that sense, nothing new there.
From my point of view, I believe that the framing of this debate in terms of the amount of money being "only invested in one person's vision" is misleading and avoids the bigger picture. The fact remains that we do have too much neuroscientific data, and the research & funding structures are geared so as to encourage little bite-sized bits of research that demonstrate some effect of one molecule, or modulation of a synapse, or any similar isolated aspect of the nervous system - i.e., towards "quick returns". True, newer tools like optogenetics are allowing for larger-scale investigations into the nuances of function of entire circuits, but even then, the brain is complex enough that the story of any individual opto paper is inherently narrow and limited. We do need to integrate all of this data, and what better way than to throw it all into one big computational simulation that doubles up as a data repository?
The HBP project aims to be a "service provider" as discussed in the BBC article linked to above. Even in computational neuroscience, where there is fierce debate as to appropriate levels of analysis of study and therefore understanding of brain function - there is no debate as to the fact that neurons do operate on a molecular level. This huge diversity of neurotransmitters, ion channels, cell types, even glial cells (groan, cries almost every neuroscientist who realizes that we can't continue to ignore them) has evolved for a reason, and each one has shown to have some kind of functionally relevant role to a neuron, circuit, and therefore behaviour. So whatever abstract models we use in our pet studies, must necessarily bottom out at the lowest level of detail in order to be relevant to understanding of the actual brain. Otherwise, we are no better than armchair philosophers trying to understand how the brain works. You need to examine the actual product of evolution, the actual tissue itself - the very nuts and bolts - and understand it at that level.
No, the HBP will never be complete, and no, it will probably be grossly incorrect in many, many ways - because important facts about the brain are not known and remain to be discovered. That shouldn't stop us from starting somewhere. As Markram says, sure, we can invest all this money into the usual ecosystem of research. But that will ultimately generate another few hundred isolated and entirely independent papers with more data, but no more integrated understanding of the brain.
The bottom line is that what is at stake is the question of how best to continue doing neuroscience work. Henry Markram believes (as do many others, let's not forget that - it's not just a "single quirky guy's vision") that some kind of integrated approach that starts to put it all together is needed at some point. It won't be perfect, but we have enough data as it is that it is needed now - in fact, it was needed yesterday. Certainly, it won't even provide all the answers, and it's not meant to. For instance, the criticism of the HBP replicating the entire brain and still not providing any answer about its function is correct in a way. It is indeed silly to think that when the "switch is turned on", the simulation will exhibit (rat) cognition. We need input from the environment, not just to provide data but also to entrain the brain and calibrate its endogenously generated rhythms - just think of the unravelling of the mind that occurs when humans are subjected to sensory deprivation. (For a fuller treatment on this issue of the environment serving to entrain or calibrate the brain, see Buzsáki's excellent treatise, Rhythms of the Brain).
What the HBP will provide, however, is a repository for integrating the swathes of data we already have, and a framework for testing any ideas of the brain. No, it will never be complete, but it is badly overdue, and thoughts of continuing to live without an integrating framework that can be tested, prodded, and drawn upon - instead continuing each researcher's narrow pet projects in isolation from one another - is as past folly as it would be to pretend to be studying and understanding genetics without having the entire genome sequenced.
In that sense, the HBP can only help in any and all endeavours in understanding the brain by providing that baseline model with as much cellular and molecular detail incorporated as possible, because any higher levels of analysis will ultimately have to interface with it (or at least with the level of detail the HBP is aiming to capture) in order to show ultimate relevance in terms of the brain. The brain, as a biological system, is inherently different in nature than the phenomena that many computational neuroscientists (coming as they do, mostly from physics and engineering backgrounds) are comfortable dealing with - which is in the framework of physical systems that can be described with a handful of equations that summarize the overall complexity at hand. The brain, sadly, is not such a system and is not amenable to "spherical cow" levels of analysis. That's not to say that it cannot be done, and that no fruitful results will emerge from such studies. On the contrary, we can learn many useful facts about the brain by building and analyzing simplified models. It's just that inherently, any such endeavours will miss the mark in important ways. The "answer", then, is to stop thinking in terms of a zero-sum game (which is the attitude that signatories of this open letter seem to be coming from) and instead consider it as a joint project or venture. Indeed, the more abstract levels of analysis have been too much in the limelight for many years, without paying any dividends. The connectionist paradigm, started in the 80s, hasn't given us any concrete and large-scale understanding of the brain, and has unfortunately (for our knowledge of the brain but not for commercial ventures) and quietly devolved into machine learning tricks for learning Netflix user preferences, etc.
In fact, such an approach that the HBP is embarking on, is badly overdue, and vastly underrepresented. It's not a popular approach because it accepts the messiness of the brain and doesn't shirk away from it by abstracting it away. Sure, it's a double-edged sword, in that by opening the Pandora's box of the molecular level, you risk missing out on what we do not yet know, but that is part and parcel of any scientific approach. Thus, kudos to the HBP project and Henry Markram for managing to get this kind of project off the ground.
I believe it will only help further our understanding of the brain in an integrated way that can evolve over time and with contribution from other levels of analysis. Those who are opposed to it, in my opinion, are doing so unfortunately primarily on personal and ideological grounds -- i.e., on ultimately selfish and jealous grounds -- than on valid scientific rebuttals.
Sadly, I lack Markram's eloquence and diplomacy in addressing the critics, but sometimes you have to grab the bull by the horns and address the real issue rather than skirt around it and be afraid to step on eggshells (meaning other people's egos).
-- PhD candidate in computational neuroscience, whose own biases have been amply revealed, he hopes.
Also this:
Stephen Luck's book
If you want to spend some money, https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Fifth-Dale-Purves/dp/0878936955/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me= is a perfect resource. This was our textbook for neurobio in college and I still find myself referencing it. It's possible you could find the PDF somewhere online, I haven't looked. If you have a little background in cell bio, this would be a great place to start learning.
Beyond that, I agree with the suggestions of /u/Hypercuboid and /u/Noobsessed.
If you are getting information off of forums (about pathways, interactions, etc.), make sure you do your own research, ask for or check sources, and try to understand the mechanisms. Wikipedia rabbit holes can sometimes help with this in the beginning, and can provide you with reliable sources/resources to follow up on. Keep in mind that the answers are almost always not as simple as people portray them. Many MOAs are not fully understood, especially with nootropics. That's why some refer to these substances as RCs and us as guinea pigs; because, in large part, that is true.
My school typically recommends Bear's textbook for systems-level information and Purves' Neuroscience for cellular stuff. I prefer Purves because it actually covers both subjects and it goes more in-depth on the molecular topics!
Yes I think the smooth pursuit is a really interesting example actually. It is a 'gray area' with respect to the distinction I am drawing, because the eyes are very close to the CNS. I do think the 'least retinal slip' is best seen as a heuristic to achieve pursuit, agreed. And it would be nonobvious before that was discovered, thats what makes it a discovery.
In Olaf Sporns' book networks of the brain http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Brain-Olaf-Sporns/dp/0262014696 the last chapter is devoted to 'embodied computation' where he has some examples of limb elasticity doing computational work and such. So that is a challenge neuroscientists face, the question of where is what taking place and how? And typically we have to answer that question by hypothesis testing. Depending on how we bound our system, different hypotheses might be generated. Moreover, it is a methodological challenge. If i had outfielders watch fly balls being hit on a screen in an mri machine, would we capture much of what the brain does when catching fly balls?
You might find it to be an 'uninteresting distinction', but in my opinion that just shows me that you are missing the larger point in favor of justifying your own arbitrarily chosen favorite level of abstraction (ie the nervous system at a particular scale).
> I know you said you have a book or something - PM me about that, I'm interested!
I've sent you a PM about the book. Glad to hear you're interested!
> What about this theory that floats around on the internet and that celebrities like Joe Rogan talk about that the pineal gland produces DMT, especially during sleep.
There is some evidence of DMT production in the pineal gland, but it's very scant at this stage. One study, last year (2013), showed trace amounts of DMT in the pineal glands of rats. This could mean that DMT is produced there, or somewhere else in the body and then stored/used there; however the amounts were far too limited to have any kind of psychedelic effect.
It's not extremely surprising, as DMT is chemically quite similar to the likes of serotonin and melatonin, so for it to form naturally in the brain isn't a huge jump biochemically speaking... it's also however not terribly interesting or useful until we know more about how much, when, why, and so on.
It could also however simply have been a freak occurrence. I'd like to see more studies being done to confirm it - especially with multiple species and animals of different ages (which may make a very large difference as well given the possible relationship between the pineal gland and the parietal eye that I mentioned).
> How did you learn as much as you know specifically about LSD?
It helps being old ;)
More seriously - I've simply read a lot and studied a lot with a critical mind. I'm a software developer professionally, but I've spent around 15 years of my free time learning and researching psychedelics and associated fields. I have no formal training, but I read university level textbooks on neuroscience, biochemistry, pharmacology and so on for fun.
Mostly, I'm just the kind of person that's both passionately curious about the world as well as being the kind of person that likes to critically analyse things. This helps to steer away from the mystical side of things (all very interesting, but lacking in anything even remotely similar to evidence) and keep me searching in more productive lines of enquiry.
> Any other books or references you'd be willing to share?
Hmmm... quite a lot.
"LSD" by Otto Snow is a good general purpose LSD book, with pretty detailed synthesis information that helps you understand the chemistry even if you're not actually planning on synthesising it yourself.
I'm not sure of your current level of skill, but if you need an intro, or refresher in to the basics of the right kind of chemistry, then Organic Chemistry I for Dummies is a great book according to my wife (who went from "no knowledge" to "able to at least understand what I'm talking about" just from this book).
For a "step-up" from there and getting to looking at the brain specifically, I'd start with (and continually go back to) Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience.
Aside from that, every research paper you can find dealing with related material. There's some good review papers as well for "summing up" a lot of others. One I really liked was "The Pharmacology of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: A Review" by Passie et al.
I also found some online courses to be really good. I recently did "Drugs and the Brain" on Coursera; it was definitely a good refresher for me, and would be excellent for anyone with a basic grounding but wanting to learn more in general. There's another on Coursera called "Medical Neuroscience", which I unfortunately missed, but will catch the next time around; and one coming up really soon titled "Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life" which I'll be doing but expect to be a somewhat simpler course than the others (I'll take it anyway - re-covering basics is always good because you do find things you've managed to miss no matter how long you've been learning).
Edit: One additional thing I should have mentioned... here on reddit, check out /r/drugnerds and maybe also /r/rationalpsychonaut
also http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Fourth-Edition-Dale-Purves/dp/0878936971 is a link to the textbook used. I will not post a link to a pdf of that version (which i cannot actually find) but there is a third edition pdf readily accessible that looks like a different chapter order.
Methodology-wise, Steve Luck has a really nice, clear introductory text to ERP techniques.
https://www.amazon.com/Therapeutic-Neuroscience-Education-Adriaan-Puentedura/dp/0985718641
​
VERY readable book here. I read it during a break in classes as a student. Worth every penny and there are books along with this that can help explain pain. Also, check out the "Pain Reframed" podcast, good information there.
we use this book in my neurobiology class and i like it.. covers a lot on how neurons do their thing
OP this is what you want I promise you.
http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273?tag=coursera-course83-20
Sims Handbook of Pediatric Neurology
Yes, absolutely. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Event-Related-Potential-Technique-Neuroscience/dp/0262621967
Here is the mobile version of your link
Former human neuroimager here. This is the best textbook intro to functional neuroimaging.
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
Dear Octopus, I promise I won't eat your fellow cephalopods anymore.
Will never forget this book/trip.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0008226296/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_6kFtDbVWGH00S
+1 on the Purves text. I find it pretty accessible even though my background is not neuroscience (or any other type of biological science). Also, you can pick up a used copy of an older edition for less than $20
Copy pasted from another post, because I'm really not putting more time into this than I already have. Also note that placebo effects (as pointed out elsewhere in the thread) are not due purely to subjective attitudes and thus do not require a person to assume a particular subjective attitude as you suggest. They work on expectations, not just attitudes or opinions. Also not even sure how to deconstruct your argument about how I wouldn't need science if I actually believed in my technique wtf that means. Also yes my epistemology is superior, but no not inherently so, thank you:
I'm just going to put it out there that any decent introductory neuroscience or physiology textbook acknowledges at least some of the physiological correlates of placebo effects (e.g., Purves et al., 2011; [Mayberg et al., 2002] (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.159.5.728)), which have been demonstrated to be therapeutically useful, most notably for their analgesic properties (Clinger et al, 2015; Atlas & Wager, 2014; Buhle et al., 2012).
I don't see any issue in a practitioner acknowledging that some clients may experience placebo effects. These effects may contribute to health and wellbeing especially in conditions including IBS, sleep disorders, depression, and chronic pain (WebMD) as long as proper medical attention is sought out as well and as long as they acknowledge that these possibilities have not been explicitly studied beyond a basic understanding of placebo effects outside the context of Reiki or homeopathy.
WebMD reference was because I'm too tired to look up references for each individual diagnosis, but there is plenty of literature on the effectiveness of placebos for these conditions (and more) if you are interested in looking for yourself. It's not hard to find, even with just google scholar.
This is what we use throughout my lab. Detailed enough to be useful, broad enough to have what you're looking for.
also as sandersh6000 said "synaptic organization of the brain" by Gordon Sheperd will have a lot of details but isn't basal ganglia specific.
Oh looks like you may be interested in studying complex systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system
Here's some stuff on using complex systems analysis to look at the brain: http://vimeo.com/13953303
http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Brain-Olaf-Sporns/dp/0262014696
>I mean the concept that Life is a force of the Universe present since its absolute beginning with a function of building toward higher complexity as an opposing force to Entropy, which builds toward nothingness. That the experience of consciousness as we know it is the result of organic matter reaching a critical threshold of complex structure in our brains.
Some people have been working on quantifying consciousness, and they're doing it by measuring reduction in entropy! Maybe you'd be interested in that? Check out Integrated Information Theory. It kinda requires some understanding of Shannon information theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory
I second the Human Brain Coloring Book.
Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Simple is a really great add-on
http://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Neuroanatomy-Book-Ridiculously-Simple/dp/0940780925
Not just for clinical - pathways are better presented here than in other texts.
Digital Anatomist and Dartmouth's Brain slices are great.
This is a great list so far, and I'd love to see it added to the sidebar.
I'd suggest adding "Neuroethics" by Martha J Farah under "Other". It gives an interesting perspective on the influence of neuroscience on law and society.
http://www.amazon.com/Neuroethics-Introduction-Readings-Basic-Bioethics/dp/0262514605
"The Human Brain in Photographs and Diagrams" is good for anyone interested in neuroanatomy. I've only used the 3rd edition- there is an updated edition, but I can't speak to how useful it is.
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Brain-Photographs-Diagrams-CD-ROM/dp/0323045731/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411223019&sr=1-2&keywords=the+human+brain+in+photographs+and+diagrams
"Structure of the Human Brain" is a very comprehensive section-by-section atlas of the brain.
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Human-Brain-Photographic-Atlas/dp/019504357X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411223434&sr=8-1&keywords=structure+of+the+human+brain+a+photographic+atlas
"Molecular Neuropharmacology" is a good advanced text for anyone interested in drug development.
http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411223180&sr=8-1&keywords=molecular+neuropharmacology
I've mentioned these because they seem to fill gaps that are currently in the library. If anybody knows of better anatomical texts, though, I'd be interested to know about them!
Handbook of pediatric neurology or Fenichel's Clinical Pediatric Neurology
Sure, I'd start with Neuroscience for an overview, some more cognitive related computational systems are described in Cognitive Neuroscience, more advanced ones in Vision and Finally Rhythms of the Brain, you can then branch out further into language and memory.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Dale-Purves/dp/1605353809/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=neuroscience&qid=1563645060&s=gateway&sr=8-6
https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Neuroscience-Biology-Mind-Fifth/dp/0393603172/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=cognitive+neuroscience&qid=1563645142&s=gateway&sr=8-2
https://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0199828237/ref=sr_1_1?crid=813HTOI3332A&keywords=rhythms+of+the+brain&qid=1563645094&s=gateway&sprefix=rhythms+of+the+%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Computational-Investigation-Representation-Information/dp/0262514621/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=vision+neuroscience&qid=1563645008&s=gateway&sr=8-1
I need two ebooks below:
Please let me know if you had it and the price you offer, I could pay via paypal.
I agree completely, Kandel's book is definitely my favorite neuroscience text. For a more undergraduate level introduction Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Mark Bear et al. and Neuroscience by Dale Purves et al. are good starting places.
Recently read Other Minds, which is about octopus's intelligence. Really good book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Minds-Octopus-Evolution-Intelligent/dp/0008226296/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536053152&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=other+minds&dpPl=1&dpID=51NJolDQXxL&ref=plSrch
If you are truly wanting a medical opinion, then here it is. Just because a MRI showed herniations, stenosis, sciatica, scoliosis and degenerative disc disease (DDD) it doesn't mean much unless your symptoms are consistent with the findings. If you MRI 100 people who have no pain, you will find the same exact findings in the majority of these people. So why do you hurt? I can't tell you that. No one can obviously. But if you live your life based on these diagnoses then you will never get better. If you are truly wanting to get better then I would suggest you look at pain science education. Some ideas are:
http://www.noigroup.com/en/Home
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Do-Hurt-Adriaan-Louw/dp/0985718625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416717090&sr=8-1&keywords=why+do+i+hurt
http://www.amazon.com/Therapeutic-Neuroscience-Education-Adriaan-Louw/dp/0985718641/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1416717090&sr=8-2&keywords=why+do+i+hurt
No one says you don't have pain but pain science education gives a different perspective on why you do and how to cope with it. Hope this helps
"What are the parts of the brain and what do they do?" is a much better formed question, but now you're getting into unsolved questions and areas of active research. There are hundreds of "identifiable parts" of the brain, and short of writing an entire textbook, there's not much I can do to answer such a broad question!
My recommendation for you would be to keep reading wikipedia (maybe start here ) and if you run into any specific questions come back to reddit and ask them, or try to get your hands on a basic neuroscience text book (the Purves book is good).
I hope I don't sound too discouraging! If you have specific questions I'm happy to answer them and I'm sure other panelists are too, but for me personally, I don't want to spend more than an hour answering any single question, and as it stands, your question would take me hours to answer well.
I recommend this book on this topic. It describes wonderfully how different systems of our brain perform Bayesian probability theory calculations, and communicate with each other using some analog kind of error-correcting codes.
You want "The Synaptic Organization of the Brain" by Gordon M. Shepherd. It may be a bit too heavy on electrophysiology for some people but it will definitely give you your fill of circuits and diagrams. Check out the reviews on Amazon to see if it fits your needs: http://www.amazon.com/Synaptic-Organization-Brain-Gordon-Shepherd/dp/019515956X
I ended up buying it through the Apple iBook store but I only have an iPhone.
Although, I do see an older version available for the kindle
Perhaps From Neuron to Brain might help.
I also work on a neuro unit (neur & tele) and am a new grad. I was looking at getting this book...
Clinical Practice of Neurological & Neurosurgical Nursing https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451172672/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_aIKvyb6YZDP5G
Neuroanatomy made ridicuously simple has a good following but I haven't had neuroanatomy yet so I'm not sure what is good or not.
I used these two books to prepare:
They are a little expensive, especially the Review, so hopefully you can find someone to borrow these from, or check with your unit educator or hospital library to see if they have copies.
Good luck! I found the test itself fairly challenging, but I was able to pass the first time through. The hardest parts for me were the questions about ER and critical care since I work on a med/surg-level neuro floor.
I am preparing to take this exam. People have recommended the Strokes FAST Facts https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Facts-Stroke-Care-Nursing-ebook/dp/B00KAZVPZ4
Buzsaki's book is also a good general reference for this:
http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0199828237