Full Description
The brain has been viewed as an organ, machine, biological computer, and nervous system component. What are its major parts and how are they interconnected to generate thinking, feelings, and behaviour? Designed for undergraduates in neuroscience, this work surveys 2500 years of scientific thinking about these questions from the perspective of fundamental architectural principles. It proposes an alternative model for the basic plan of neural systems organization based on an explosion of structural data from the neuroanatomy revolution of the 1970s. Possible relationships between neural networks and gene networks revealed by the human genome project are also explored.
Contents
1. How the Brain Works: Structure and Function; 2. The Simplest Nervous Systems: Neurons, Nerve Nets, and Behaviour; 3. Centralization and Symmetry: Ganglia and Nerves; 4. The Basic Vertebrate Plan: Nervous System Topology; 5. Brain and Behaviour: A Four Systems Network Model; 6. The Motor System: Coordinating External and Internal Behaviours; 7. The Behavioural State System: Intrinsic Control of Sleep and Wakefulness; 8. The Cognitive System: Thinking and Voluntary Control of Behaviour; 9. The Sensory System: Inputs from the Environment and the Body; 10. Modifiability: Learning, Stress, Cycles, and Damage Repair; 11. Gene Networks: Relationship to Neural Networks; APPENDICES; A. DESCRIBING POSITION IN THE ANIMAL BODY; B. NAMING AND CLASSIFYING NERVOUS SYSTEM PARTS; C. METHODS FOR ANALYZING BRAIN ARCHITECTURE
