Neurobiology
Book - 2024
"An essential guide to help you demystify the complex topic of neurobiology and jump into this fascinating scientific field. Neurobiology is a notoriously difficult subject, but Neurobiology For Dummies explains the essentials in terms anyone can understand. This fun and accessible book covers the fundamentals, covering the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the nervous system. Students in fields like neuroscience and pharmacology will get a complete overview of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of the nervous system, making it easier to complete coursework and pass exams in introductory neurobiology courses. In this updated edition, fresh examples highlight the latest research, so you'll be prepared with a current understa...nding of the science. Whatever your ultimate career destination, this Dummies guide will help you get neurobiology under your belt." --
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- Subjects
- Published
-
Hoboken, NJ :
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
[2024]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Other Authors
- Edition
- 2nd edition
- Physical Description
- xviii, 396 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes index.
- ISBN
- 9781394266340
- Introduction
- About This Book
- Foolish Assumptions
- Icons Used in This Book
- Beyond the Book
- Where to Go from Here
- Part 1. Getting Started with Neurobiology
- Chapter 1. Welcome to the World of Neurobiology
- Starting with Neurobiology-Just the Basics
- Arriving at a nervous system
- Coordinating responses in simple circuits
- Studying invertebrates
- Introducing Neurons and Glia
- Beginning with functional anatomy
- Establishing the cells
- Specializing the functions
- Forming the barriers
- Electrifying the membrane
- Communicating with targets
- Protecting and Nourishing the Parts
- Safeguarding the CNS
- Providing the supplies
- Supporting the PNS
- Navigating Around the Nervous System
- Organizing gray matter
- Tracking along white matter
- Dissecting functions of the CNS
- Looking at the cerebrum
- Figuring out the lobes' functions
- Situating underneath the cortex
- Moving the Correct Way
- Making the movements
- Controlling the output
- Focusing on older parts
- Ensuring homeostasis
- Completing the circuit
- Perceiving the World, Thinking, and Remembering
- Seeing and hearing is believing
- Sensing touch, smell, and taste
- Focusing on learning, memory, and plasticity
- Controlling with the executive brain
- Thinking about cognition
- Chapter 2. Meeting the Building Blocks
- Introducing Molecular Building Blocks
- Hydrating with water and electrolytes
- Identifying the two types of bonds
- Dissolving In water or lipids
- Creating cellular subunits and polymers
- Replicating DMA
- Getting Into Genes
- Creating RNA in transcription
- Examining epigenetics
- Focusing on transcription mechanisms
- Synthesizing Proteins in Translation
- Coding for proteins
- Folding in three dimensions
- Functioning in different ways
- Organizing the Organelles
- Finding the energy
- Depending on astrocytes
- Ordering with the Cytoskeleton
- Mobilizing with microtubules
- Getting around with actin
- Setting Boundaries: Cellular Membranes
- Locating lipids in the bilayer
- Forming the bilayers
- Adding transmembrane proteins
- Trafficking Membrane Proteins and Signals
- Moving cargoes around
- Bringing cargoes in
- Sorting the cargoes
- Releasing signals from neurons
- Keeping the pressure
- Eyeing the Neuron: Not Just Another Cell
- Noticing neuron anatomy
- Understanding what neurons do
- Getting Back to Genetics
- Introducing inheritance
- Recognizing phenotype and genotype
- Determining dominant and recessive traits
- Altering the genome: Disorders
- Modifying Genes: Yes or No?
- Researching on animals
- Examining gene therapy
- Delivering the genes
- Chapter 3. Constructing the Nervous System
- Staging Early Development
- Progressing from fertilization
- Partitioning in gastrulation
- Specifying the germ layers
- Inducing the neural plate
- Forming the Neural Tube in Neurulation
- Closing the neural tube
- Separating into regions
- Meeting the neocortex
- Producing Neural Cells
- Migrating along radial glia
- Generating inhibitory interneurons
- Going to gliogenesis
- Differentiating at Journey's End
- Switching programs with transcription factors
- Establishing cortical neurons
- Extending and Guiding Axons and Dendrites
- Detecting the cues
- Competing for survival
- Establishing the Synapses
- Beginning the contact
- Refining synapses
- Strengthening synapses
- Mapping out the cortex
- Competing for cortical space
- Wiring in the visual system
- Myelinating into Adulthood
- Covering the CNS with meninges
- Completing the PNS
- Disrupting Development
- Aging cells
- Aging and brain dysfunction
- Chapter 4. Modulating Membrane Potentials
- Getting the Membrane Potential
- Resting with the membrane potential
- Actively moving ions with transporters
- Storing Energy in Ion Gradients
- Facilitating ion movement with channels
- Calculating the equilibrium potential: The Nernst equation
- Establishing the Resting Membrane Potential with Leak Channels
- Finding the driving force on an ion
- Calculating using the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz equation
- Changing the Membrane Potential
- Communicating at synapses
- Looking at neurotransmitter gated channels
- Focusing on graded potentials: Passive changes in membrane potentials
- Integrating responses from synaptic signals
- Generating the Action Potential
- Reaching threshold for firing
- Encoding information: The neural code
- Conducting Action Potentials
- Speeding action potentials
- Conducting along myelinated axons
- Chapter 5. Transmitting to Targets
- Looking at Synaptic Transmission
- Examining chemical synapses
- Getting to know neurotransmitters
- Synthesizing with small molecule neurotransmitters
- Identifying neuropeptide neurotransmitters
- Combining neurotransmitters
- Looking at unconventional transmitters
- Expanding Views of Chemical Synapses
- Focusing on Chemical Synaptic Transmission Mechanisms
- Packaging neurotransmitters
- Keeping calcium levels low at rest
- Checking out neurotransmitter release
- Releasing Neurotransmitter from the Presynaptic Region
- Progressing through the sequence
- Noting differences in transmission
- Being Receptive to Receptors
- Grasping some key characteristics
- Activating neurotransmitter receptors
- Directing fast transmission
- Exciting the postsynaptic target
- Inhibiting for control
- Meeting Metabotropic Receptors
- Working through G proteins
- Activating second messengers
- Co-expressing receptor types
- Getting Back to Rest
- Ending neurotransmitter responses
- Recycling membranes by endocytosis
- Closing in on Electrical Synapses
- Flowing through gap junctions
- Comparing chemical and electrical
- Integrating Postsynaptic Responses
- Summating the potentials
- Changing synapses in plasticity
- Dividing and Conquering: Circuits
- Analyzing the functions
- Pooling sensory input
- Coordinating motor output
- Comparing brains to computers
- Chapter 6. Communicating through Chemicals
- Activating with Acetylcholine
- Working with cholinergic neurons
- Stimulating nicotinic receptors
- Expanding with muscarinic receptors
- Contracting muscles
- Mediating autonomic functions
- Affecting target organs
- Stimulating in the brain
- Focusing your attention and remembering
- Exciting with Glutamate
- Finding glutamate
- Activating glutamate receptors
- Specializing in ionotropic receptors
- Transmitting at glutamate synapses
- Contributing metabotropic receptors
- Sorting out spines
- Commanding information flow
- Adapting to encode memories
- Removing the signal
- Inhibiting with GABA and Glycine
- Calming neurons down
- Inhibiting with chloride
- Shunting the current
- Regulating GABA receptors
- Integrating and Maintaining the Balance
- Balancing the inputs
- Getting toxic with too much activity
- Signaling with Purines
- Finding receptors everywhere
- Snoozing with adenosine
- Modulating with Monoamines
- Feeling motivated with dopamine
- Becoming alert with norepinephrine
- Affecting mood with serotonin
- Rewiring with serotonin
- Resting with histamine
- Targeting transporters
- Getting your attention
- Behaving with Neuropeptides
- Making and releasing peptides
- Controlling behaviors
- Relieving pain and feeling happy
- Part 2. Controlling Muscles, Movement, and Survival
- Chapter 7. Moving Muscles with Motor Neurons
- Making a Move: Muscle Types and What They Do
- Processing with smooth muscle
- Striated muscle for hearts and limbs
- Twitching fast and slow: Muscle composition
- Pulling Your Weight: How Muscle Cells Contract
- Patterning muscle contractions
- Understanding motor neurons
- Eyeing the motor unit
- Signaling at the neuromuscular junction
- Coupling excitation contraction
- Sliding filaments: Actin and myosin
- Controlling Muscle Contraction
- Modulating firing rate
- Recruiting motor neurons
- Reflexing without Reflecting
- Spinal reflexes: Proprioception and protection
- Muscle spindles and the stretch reflex
- Staying put with the loading reflex
- Golgi tendon organs
- Joint receptors for position
- Withdrawing a limb in the flexor reflex
- Overriding a reflex
- Exercise and Aging
- Use it or lose it: The effects of exercise
- Slowing down with age
- Comparing muscle mass in men and women
- Chapter 8. Controlling Movement through Brain Pathways
- Overviewing Pathways for Controlling Movement
- Focusing on pyramidal tracts
- Eyeing extrapyramidal tracts
- Directing Voluntary Movement with the Motor Cortex
- Mapping the movements: The homunculus
- Population coding
- Coordinating Muscle Groups
- Guiding with internal goals and the SMA
- Externally monitored performance and the PMC
- Setting Goals with the Prefrontal Cortex
- Planning with the lateral prefrontal cortex
- Processing emotions with the orbitofrontal cortex
- Producing speech: Broca's area
- Processing with the cingulate cortex
- Selecting with the Basal Ganglia
- Flowing into and out of the basal ganglia
- Working inside basal ganglia circuits
- Correcting Errors and Motor Learning: The Cerebellum
- Dividing functions in the cerebellum
- Stepping in holes and what to do about it
- Carrying the load: Feed-forward force calibration
- Responding through cerebellar circuits
- The Thalamus: Gateway to the Neocortex
- Moving through motor pathways
- Paying attention to the pulvinar
- Modulating with thalamic reticular areas
- Seeing the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus
- Knowing, or Not Knowing, Who's In Control
- Chapter 9. Focusing On the Spinal Cord and Brain Stem
- Surveying the Spinal Cord
- Protecting the spinal cord
- Examining the gray and white matter
- Noting the spinal nerves
- Moving around: Input and effectors
- Reflecting on the basic spinal reflex
- Focusing on spinal central pattern generators
- Feeling and Acting: Connecting the CNS and PNS
- Getting stimulated by neural sensors
- Moving with motor neuron inputs
- Zeroing in on motor neurons-effectors
- Doing the heavy lifting: Muscle cells
- Concluding with the spinal cord
- Moving and Surviving with the Brainstem
- Looking closer at the brainstem
- Meeting the medulla
- Presenting the pons
- Monitoring the midbrain
- Chapter 10. Maintaining the Internal Environment
- Finding the Right Tone: The Autonomic Nervous System
- Subdividing the autonomic nervous system
- Inputting to the autonomic nervous system
- Responding with visceral reflexes
- Controlling the Autonomic Nervous System
- Regulating autonomic output with the brainstem and spinal cord
- Integrating autonomic control by the hypothalamus
- Linking the brain to the endocrine system
- Oscillating with brain waves
- Sleeping and waking: Circadian rhythms
- Staying Alive with the Reticular Formation
- Separating the reticular formation
- Controlling functions
- Modulating activity: Reticular activating system
- Continuing through the thalamus and cortex
- Controlling Your Motives: The Limbic System
- Going from allocortex to mesocortex to neocortex
- Organizing thoughts and activities with the cingulate gyrus
- Creating memories with the hippocampus
- Feeling emotional with the amygdala and beyond
- Assigning with the insula (insular cortex)
- Motivating with the basal ganglia
- Coordinating with the cerebellum again
- Integrating with the prefrontal cortex
- Chapter 11. Topping It Off: The Neocortex
- Looking Inside the Skull: The Neocortex
- Examining the lobes
- Noticing uniform structure and circuits
- Communicating through connections
- Getting to the Brain You Have Today
- Looking at how the neocortex develops
- Enlarging the frontal lobes for complex behavior
- Setting and accomplishing goals
- Making Decisions: The Lateral Prefrontal Cortex
- Keeping it all in mind
- Changing your plans
- Dialing that number: Working memory
- Recalling long-term memory
- Doing the Right Thing
- Responding with the orbitofrontal cortex
- Getting that bad feeling: the amygdala and cortical connections
- Going with your gut
- Seeing Both Sides: The Left and Right Hemispheres
- Specializing for language
- Taking in the big picture: Spatial processing
- Managing with two brains in one head
- Appreciating the style of each hemisphere
- Considering Sex and the Brain
- Sizing up the male and female brain
- Zeroing in on certain areas and lateralization
- Knowing the role of hormones
- Chapter 12. Delving into Motor Systems Disorders
- Leading to Motor Disorders
- Early motor disabilities and disorders
- Injuries and infections
- Lifespan motor disorders
- Failing Forces: Muscle Diseases
- Muscular dystrophy
- Inflammatory myopathies
- Autoimmune disorders
- Disrupting the Neuromuscular Junction
- Myasthenia gravis
- Lambert-Eaton syndrome
- Neurotoxins and clinical uses
- Looking At Damage to Motor Neurons
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
- Multiple sclerosis
- Viral infections
- Examining Disorders of Movement
- Parkinson's disease
- Huntington's disease
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Neuropathies; motor-sensory dysfunction
- Bell's palsy
- Focusing on Strokes and Injuries
- Experiencing a stroke
- Treating strokes
- Injuring the brain
- Injuring the spinal cord
- Substituting Machines: Neuroprostheses
- Part 3. Understanding Perception and Cognition
- Chapter 13. Looking At Vision and Hearing
- Imaging and Capturing Light: Vision
- Making movies on the retina
- Converting through phototransduction
- Light and the transduction cascade
- Joining the Nervous System: Photoreceptor Output
- Converting light patterns to contrast: Bipolar and horizontal cells
- Making symmetry with On and Off bipolar cells
- Projecting with retinal ganglion cells
- Coloring It in: Photons and color vision
- Sending Messages to the Brain
- Relaying at the thalamus
- Parallel processing in visual centers in mammals
- Fanning Out: From Thalamus to Occipital Lobe
- Layering and concurrent processing in VI
- Selecting for orientation and movement
- Streaming the Message to the Temporal and Parietal Lobes
- Seeing complex shapes, colors, and objects in the ventral stream
- Seeing where and how-to in the dorsal stream
- Communicating between dorsal and ventral streams
- Losing vision: Blindness
- Seeing without meaning: Agnosias
- Listening In: Capturing Sound Waves
- Good vibrations: Gathering and transmitting sound to the brain
- Responding to waves with hair cells
- Transducing waves into electrical responses
- Toning up: Frequency transduction in the Organ of Corti
- Channeling Sounds to the Brain
- Comparing and relaying
- Analyzing sounds: Superior temporal lobe
- Losing Hearing
- Conductive versus neural hearing loss
- Eh? Aging, environment, and hearing loss
- Aiding hearing: Amplifying and replacing
- Ringing and tinnitus
- Balancing via the Vestibular System
- Chapter 14. Feeling, Smelling, and Tasting
- Getting in Touch with the Skin
- Feeling your way with mechanoreceptors
- Employing receptor cells for temperature, itch, and pain
- Locating your limbs with skin, muscle, and joint receptors
- Spinal processing and cranial nerves
- Sending messages to the thalamus
- Recognizing What You Touch at Somatosensory Cortex
- Mapping senses with the homunculus
- Noting specialized somatosensory areas
- Getting complicated with pain
- Sniffing Out the World around You
- Nosing around: Olfactory receptors
- Exploring the olfactory bulb
- Reaching the cortex and amygdala
- Smelling badly versus smelling bad
- Communicating with pheromones
- Tasting Basics: Sweet, Sour, Salty, and Bitter Receptors
- Grasping the basics of taste
- Transducing different ways
- Coding for taste: Labels versus patterns
- Understanding the umami problem
- Tasting with the Brain
- Projecting taste to the thalamus
- Discriminating taste in the cortex
- Combining taste and smell for flavor
- Losing taste through injuries
- Feeling full
- Monitoring Body Functions with internal Chemoreceptors
- Chapter 15. Learning to Remember
- Defining Learning and Memory
- Examining implicit (Nondeclarative) Memory
- Starting with sensation: Sensory memory
- Getting used to habituation
- Responding to sensitization
- Classical conditioning
- Fear conditioning
- Operant conditioning
- Learning motor sequences: Procedural memory
- Preparing for priming
- Focusing on Declarative Memory
- Fleeting sensory memories
- Seeing iconic memory in action
- Examining short-term memory
- Using short-term memory: Working memory
- Addressing long-term declarative (explicit) memory
- Examining Brain Regions and Memory Mechanisms
- Associating context with results in the hippocampus
- Inputting to the hippocampus
- Understanding the intrinsic hippocampal circuit
- Looking at memory through changes in synapses
- Identifying additional mechanisms in synaptic plasticity
- Focusing on synaptic plasticity in implicit memory
- Memory retrieval
- Comparing computer versus animal memory
- Forgetting It: Amnesia and Other Memory Loss
- Losing yourself in amnesia
- Damaging the hippocampus or frontal lobe
- Examining Alzheimer's disease
- Improving Your Learning and Memory
- Studying hard versus studying well: Schedules
- Traveling the path to better memory
- Enhancing memory through training and exercise
- Chapter 16. The Frontal Lobes and Executive Motor Control
- Comparing Reflexes versus Conscious or Goal-Generated Action
- Turning ideas and goals into action
- Representing actions at multiple levels
- Deciding How to Do It: The Frontal Lobes
- Originating abstract plans
- Converting plans to body control
- Commanding with the prefrontal cortex
- Initiating Action in the Basal Ganglia
- Preparing for action
- Patterning and oscillating
- Learning with the basal ganglia
- Coordinating through the Motor Cortex
- Feeding back to guide movement
- Using the supplementary motor area
- Learning motor sequences
- Mirroring Others: Mirror Neurons
- Defining mirroring behaviors
- Imitating others through mirroring
- Chapter 17. Thinking About Intelligence, Language, and Lateralization
- Adapting the Human Brain for Language
- Finding how the brain is organized
- Contemplating with the neocortex
- Sensory processing in parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes
- Specializing for memory
- Following Thought through Sensory Pathways and Hierarchies
- Relaying to the thalamus and cortex
- Projecting back to the thalamus
- Gating and integrating functions
- Speaking Your Mind: Language, Vision, and the Brain Hemispheres
- Comparing communication and language
- Locating language in the brain
- Losing language from neural dysfunction
- Examining visual processing asymmetries
- Considering where consciousness lives
- Defining Intelligence
- Math, language, and social intelligence
- Intelligence components for decisions, abstract thinking, problem solving
- Investigating intelligence factors
- Understanding Consciousness
- Learning language instinctually
- Developing internal language and consciousness
- Theorizing consciousness
- Chapter 18. Brain Dysfunction in Developmental and Mental Disorders
- Grasping Developmental and Mental Disorders as Brain Dysfunction
- Building brains
- Developing while growing
- Turning thoughts into synapses
- Exploring Genetic Causes
- Fragile X syndrome
- Rett syndrome
- Williams syndrome
- Down syndrome
- Linking Genetic and Environmental Factors
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Recognizing How the Environment Can Damage the Developing Brain
- Substance-related syndromes
- Maternal stress and infections
- Combining Genes with Environment in Mental Disorders
- Depression
- Schizophrenia
- Obsessive compulsive disorders
- Posttraumatic stress disorder
- Epilepsy
- Eating and Drinking for Brain Function
- Considering naturally occurring psychoactive substances
- Feeding the brain properly
- Looking at commonly misused drugs
- Part 4. The Part of Tens
- Chapter 19. Ten Most Important Neural Circuits
- The Reticular Formation
- Somatic Reflexes
- Central Pattern Generators
- Thalamic Relay to the Cortex
- Cerebellar Coordination
- Hippocampal Circuitry and Activation with the Cortex
- The Amygdala Orbitofrontal Cortex Loop
- The Conscious Triangle
- The Basal Ganglia Thalamus Loop
- The Cingulate and Pulvinar Executives
- Chapter 20. Ten Technologies Revolutionizing Brain Science
- Cultured Slices, Cells, and Organoids
- Fluorescence, Confocal, and Two-Photon Microscopy
- Advances in Electrical Recordings
- Neurogenetics
- Genome sequencing
- Gene expression
- Genetic Manipulation of Neural Cells
- Brain Imaging: Optical, Magnetic, and Electrical
- Electrical Brain Stimulation
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation
- Transcranial direct current stimulation
- Deep brain stimulation
- Optogenetics
- Microelectrode Arrays
- Brains Interfaced with Computers
- Index