Neuroscience For Dummies

Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
	About This Book
	Foolish Assumptions
	Icons Used in This Book
	Beyond This Book
	Where to Go from Here
Part 1 Introducing the Nervous System
	Chapter 1 A Quick Trip through the Nervous System
		Understanding the Evolution of the Nervous System
			Specializing and communicating
			Moving hither, thither, and yon — in a coordinated way
			Evolving into complex animals
			Enter the neocortex
		Looking at How the Nervous System Works
			The important role of neurons
			Computing in circuits, segments, and modules
			What a charge: The role of electricity
			Understanding the nervous system’s modular organization
		Looking at the Basic Functions of the Nervous System
			Sensing the world around you
			Moving with motor neurons
			Deciding and doing
			Processing thoughts: Using intelligence and memory
				Language
				Episodic memory
		When Things Go Wrong: Neurological and Mental Illness
		Revolutionizing the Future: Advancements in Various Fields
			Treating dysfunction
				Pharmacological therapies
				Transplants
				Electrical stimulation
				Neural prostheses
				Genetic therapies
			Augmenting function: Changing who we are
	Chapter 2 All about the Brain and Spinal Cord
		Looking Inside the Skull: The Brain and Its Parts
			The neocortex: Controlling the controllers
				Finding your way around the neocortex: Dorsal, ventral, anterior, and posterior
				Grooves and ridges: The sulci and gyri
				The left and right hemispheres
				The four major lobes
				The parietal lobe
				The occipital lobe
				The temporal lobe
			Below the neocortex: The thalamus
			The limbic system and other important subcortical areas
				The hippocampus
				The amygdala
				Orbitofrontal cortex
				The anterior cingulate cortex
				The basal ganglia
			Transitioning between the brain and the spinal cord
				The midbrain
				The reticular formation
				Processing the basics below the midbrain: The pons and medulla
				Coordinating movement: The cerebellum
			Looking at differences: Size, structure, and other variations
				Mine’s bigger than yours!
				It’s what’s inside that counts: Looking at differences in structural organization
				Considering gender-based brain differences
		The Spinal Cord: The Intermediary between Nervous Systems
			Looking at the spinal reflex
			Getting your muscles moving
		Fighting or Fleeing: The Autonomic Nervous System
		How We Know What We Know about Neural Activity
			Examining problems caused by brain injuries
			Using technology to image the brain: From early EEGs to today
				PET and SPECT
				fMRI
				MEG
				DTI
				Optical imaging
	Chapter 3 Understanding How Neurons Work
		Neuron Basics: Not Just Another Cell in the Body
			Sending and receiving info between neurons: Synaptic receptors
				Looking at the receptors: Pre- and postsynaptic components
				Firing off spikes to other neurons
			Receiving input from the environment: Specialized receptors
			Ionotropic versus metabotropic receptors
			The three major functional classes of neurotransmitters
		How Shocking! Neurons as Electrical Signaling Devices
			Yikes, spikes: The action potential
				The problems with getting from here to there
				Helping the signal along: Voltage-dependent sodium channels
				Jumping from node to node
			Closing the loop: From action potential to neurotransmitter release
		Moving Around with Motor Neurons
		Non-neuronal Cells: Glial Cells
			Astrocytes
			Oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells
			Microglial cells
		Recording Techniques
			Single extracellular microelectrodes
			Microelectrode arrays
			Sharp intracellular electrodes
			Patch-clamp electrodes
			Optical imaging devices
Part 2 Translating the Internal and External Worlds through Your Senses
	Chapter 4 Feeling Your Way: The Skin Senses
		How Do You Feel? The Lowdown on the Skin and Its Sensory Neurons
			General properties of the skin
			Sensing touch: The mechanoreceptors
				Merkel disks
				Meissner’s corpuscles
				Ruffini corpuscles
				Pacinian corpuscles
			How mechanoreceptors work
			Sensing temperature and pain
			Sensing position and movement: Proprioception and kinesthesis
		Skin Receptors, Local Spinal Circuits, and Projections to the Brain
			Somatosensory receptor outputs
			Locating the sensation: Specialized cortical sensory areas
				Mapping skin receptors to specific brain areas: Cortical maps
				Receptor densities
		Understanding the Complex Aspects of Pain
			Reducing — or overlooking — pain
				Neurotransmitters that reduce or block pain
				Using distraction to alleviate pain: The gate theory
			Pain-free and hating it: Peripheral neuropathy
			Chronic pain and individual differences in pain perception
	Chapter 5 Looking at Vision
		The Eyes Have It: A Quick Glance at Your Eyes
			The retina: Converting photons to electrical signals
			Catching photons: Light and phototransduction
			Getting the message to the brain
				More photoreceptors in the center of the eye
				Modulating responses around average light level
				Minimizing information across space
			Processing signals from the photoreceptors: Horizontal and bipolar cells
				Step 1: Reducing redundant signals (horizontal cells and lateral inhibition)
				Step 2: On to bipolar cells and to the processing layers beyond
			Sending out and shaping the message: Ganglion and amacrine cells
				Converting analog to digital signals to go the distance
				Breaking down into ganglion cell types and classes
		From the Eyes to the Vision Centers of the Brain
			Destination: Thalamus
				Crossing to the other side: The left-right sorting of images
				Looking at the visual signal in the thalamus
			Other destinations
				The superior colliculus: Controlling eye movement
				The accessory optic and pretectal nuclei
				The suprachiasmatic nucleus
				The Edinger-Westphal nucleus
			From the thalamus to the occipital lobe
				What happens in V1 and other visual areas
				Looking at the dorsal and ventral streams
				The dorsal stream
				The ventral stream
				Crosstalk between the dorsal and ventral streams
		Impaired Vision and Visual Illusions
			Looks the same to me: Color blindness
			Understanding blindness
			Visual illusions
	Chapter 6 Sounding Off: The Auditory System
		The Ear: Capturing and Decoding Sound Waves
			Gathering sound: The outer ear
				The pinna, the first part of the outer ear
				Sailing into the auditory canal
				Banging the (ear)drum
			The middle ear
			Playing chords to the brain: The inner ear
				Opening ion channels to fire action potentials
				Sending information about frequency and amplitude
		Making Sense of Sounds: Central Auditory Projections
			Stops before the thalamus
			Off to the thalamus: The medial geniculate nucleus
			Processing sound in the brain: The superior temporal lobe
			Handling complex auditory patterns
				Hearing with meaning: Specializations for language
				Perceiving music: I’ve got rhythm
		Locating Sound
			Computing azimuth (horizontal angle)
				Interaural intensity difference
				Interaural time difference
			Detecting elevation
		I Can’t Hear You: Deafness and Tinnitus
			Hearing loss
			Oh those bells bells bells bells bells bells bells: Tinnitus
	Chapter 7 Odors and Taste
		What’s That Smell?
			Sorting things out through the olfactory bulb
			Projecting along different paths
				Looping between the orbitofrontal cortex and the mediodorsal thalamus
				Projecting to the pyriform cortex and the amygdala
				Projecting to the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus
				Projecting straight to the amygdala
			Getting more specific in the orbitofrontal cortex
		Having Good Taste
			The discriminating tongue: The four basic tastes
				Sweet
				Salt
				Sour
				Bitter
			Sending the taste message to the brain: Taste coding
				Projecting to the brain stem via the chorda tympani and the glossopharyngeal nerve
				Distributed versus labeled line coding
			Identifying and remembering tastes
		The Role of Learning and Memory in Taste and Smell
		Lacking Taste and Smelling Badly
			Smelling poorly or not at all
			Satiety
Part 3 Moving Right Along: Motor Systems
	Chapter 8 Movement Basics
		Identifying Types of Movement
			Movements that regulate internal body functions
			Reflexive movements
			Planned and coordinated movements
		Controlling Movement: Central Planning and Hierarchical Execution
			Activating non-voluntary muscle movements
			Activating the withdrawal reflex
			Stepping up the hierarchy: Locomotion
			Using your brain for complex motor behavior
		Pulling the Load: Muscle Cells and Their Action Potentials
		Muscle and Muscle Motor Neuron Disorders
			Myasthenia gravis
			Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
			Motor neuron viral diseases: Rabies and polio
			Spinal cord injury
	Chapter 9 Coordinating Things More: The Spinal Cord and Pathways
		The Withdrawal Reflex: An Open-Loop Response
		Hold Your Position! Closed-Loop Reflexes
			Opposing forces: Extensor-flexor muscle pairs
			Determining the correct firing rate with the comparator neural circuit
		The Modulating Reflexes: Balance and Locomotion
			Maintaining balance: The vestibulospinal reflex
			Do the locomotion
				The basics of locomotion
				Alternating limb gaits: Spinal pattern generators
		Correcting Errors without Feedback: The Cerebellum
			Looking at cerebellar systems
			Predicting limb location during movement
			Focusing on cortical and brain-stem control of movement
	Chapter 10 Planning and Executing Actions
		Making the Move from Reflexes to Conscious or Goal-Generated Action
			How the frontal lobes function
				Sending messages from the primary motor cortex to the muscles
				Setting the goals of motor activity
			Planning, correcting, learning: Prefrontal cortex and subcortical processors
			Working memory
			Initiating actions: Basal ganglia
			In the middle of things: Supplementary and pre-motor areas
				The premotor cortex: Learning how to get it right
				The supplementary motor cortex: Breezing right through
			The cerebellum: Where you coordinate and learn movements
			Putting it all together
		Where Are the Free Will Neurons?
			Which comes first: The thought or the action?
			Contemplating the study results
			You’re still accountable!
		Discovering New (and Strange) Neurons
			Mirror neurons
			Von Economo neurons
				Where these neurons are found
				Speculation about what these neurons do
		When the Wheels Come Off: Motor Disorders
			Myasthenia gravis
			Injuries to the spinal cord and brain
			Degeneration of the basal ganglia
				Parkinson’s disease
			Huntington’s disease
	Chapter 11 Unconscious Actions with Big Implications
		Working behind the Scenes: The Autonomic Nervous System
			Understanding the functions of the autonomic nervous system
				Matching the activity levels of different organs
				Letting us switch between quiet and active states
			Dividing and conquering: Sympathetic and parasympathetic subsystems
				The sympathetic subsystem: Fight or flight
				The parasympathetic subsystem: All is well!
			Controlling the autonomic nervous system
				Getting sensory feedback from target organs
				The hypothalamus: Controlling the sympathetic and parasympathetic subsystems
			Crossing signals: When the autonomic nervous system goes awry
		Sweet Dreams: Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
			Synchronizing the biological clock with light exposure
				Intrinsic versus real world cycle times
				The role of retinal ganglion cells
			Looking at the different stages of sleep
				NREM sleep
				REM sleep
			Functional associations of brain rhythms
				Alpha rhythms
				Beta waves
				Gamma waves
				Delta waves
				Theta
			Controlling the sleep cycles
			Not so sweet dreams: Fighting sleep disorders
Part 4 Intelligence: The Thinking Brain and Consciousness
	Chapter 12 Understanding Intelligence, Consciousness, and Emotions
		Defining Intelligence
			Understanding the nature of intelligence: General or specialized?
				Sensory pathways to specific areas of the brain
				Localization, plasticity, and recovery from brain damage
			Components of intelligence
				Biological variations
				Upbringing
				Intelligence as an adaptive behavior
			Looking at the different levels of intelligence
		Intelligence about Emotions
			Tapping into memories of strong emotional reactions
			Emoting about the limbic system
				The hippocampus
				The amygdala
				The anterior cingulate cortex
				The orbitofrontal cortex
		Understanding Consciousness
			Looking at assumptions about consciousness
			Types of consciousness
			Studying consciousness
				Sleep versus waking
				Coma versus paralysis
				Brain damage
			Two camps and a middle ground
			Unconscious processing: Blindsight, neglect, and other phenomena
				The “cocktail party” situation
				Blindsided by blindsight
				Subliminal perception and priming
				Being neglected
	Chapter 13 How the Brain Processes Thoughts
		The Brain: Taking Command at Multiple Levels
		All about the Neocortex
			The four major lobes of the brain and their functions
			Gray matter versus white matter
			Universal versus small-world connectivity
			Minicolumns and the six degrees of separation
			Defining the six-layered structure of the cortex
				The job of the pyramidal cells
				The canonical circuit
			Hail to the neocortex!
		Controlling the Content of Thought: Sensory Pathways and Hierarchies
			Sensory relays from the thalamus to the cortex
				Projecting from the thalamus to each sense’s primary cortex
				Projecting back to the thalamus and other regions in the cortex
				Thalamic integration and gating functions
			The hippocampus: Specializing for memory
		Dividing and Conquering: Language, Vision, and the Brain Hemispheres
			Specialized brain systems for language
				Wernicke’s area
				Broca’s area
			Seeing the whole and the parts: Visual processing asymmetries
		Where Consciousness Resides
			Language and left- or right-hemisphere damage
			Understanding the “left side interpreter”
	Chapter 14 The Executive Brain
		Getting the Brain You Have Today: The Neocortex versus Your Reptilian Brain
			My neocortex is bigger than yours: Looking at relative sizes
			The relationship between prefrontal cortex size and the ability to pursue goals
		Working Memory, Problem-Solving, and the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex
			Brain processes managing working memory
			The limits of working memory
			Perseveration: Sticking with the old, even when it doesn’t work anymore
		Making Up and Changing Your Mind: The Orbitofrontal Cortex
			Feeling it in your gut: Learned emotional reactions
			Gambling on getting it right: Risk taking, aversion, and pleasure
			Case-based reasoning: Thinking about social consequences
		Are We There Yet? The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
			Logging errors and changing tactics
			Acting without thinking
			Who’s minding the store? Problems in the anterior cingulate cortex
	Chapter 15 Learning and Memory
		Learning and Memory: One More Way to Adapt to the Environment
			Developmental adaptations
			Classical learning
		Sending More or Fewer Signals: Adaptation versus Facilitation
			Adaptation
			Facilitation
			Studying habituation and sensitization in sea slugs
		Exploring What Happens during Learning: Changing Synapses
			Neural computation: Neural AND and OR gates
			The McCulloch-Pitts neuron
			Rewiring your brain: The NMDA receptor
				Introducing the NMDA receptor
				The NMDA receptor in action
				Strengthening the synapse: Long-term potentiation
		The Role of the Hippocampus in Learning and Memory
			Going from short- to long-term memory
			A matrix of coincidence detectors
			Remembering as knowing: Cortical mechanisms
			Knowing versus knowing that you know: Context and episodic memory
		Losing Your Memory: Forgetting, Amnesia, and Other Disorders
		Getting Brainier: Improving Your Learning
			Distributing study time over many shorter sessions
			Getting enough sleep
			Practicing in your mind
			Rewarding and punishing
	Chapter 16 Developing and Modifying Brain Circuits: Plasticity
		Developing from Conception
			Arising from the ectoderm: The embryonic nervous system
				The hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain: The divisions of the ectoderm
				Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny, but it looks that way
			Adding layers: The development of the cerebral cortex
				Neural stem cells and migratory precursor cells
				Gluing things together: Glial cells and development
				Migrating along radial glial cells and differentiating
			Wiring it all together: How axons connect various areas of the brain to each other
				Chemical affinities and cell surface markers
				Putting together the basic brain structure
		Learning from Experience: Plasticity and the Development of Cortical Maps
			Mapping it out: Placing yourself in a visual, auditory, and touching world
			Firing and wiring together: Looking at Hebb’s law
				Understanding Hebb’s law
				Applying Hebb’s law to cortical maps
			Environmental effects: Nature versus nurture
			Genetics: Specifying the brain-building procedure
		Taking the Wrong Path: Nervous System Disorders of Development
			Looking for genetic developmental errors in mutant mice
			Environmental effects on development of the human brain
		The Aging Brain
			Living long and well: Lifespan changes in brain strategy
			Accumulating insults: Aging-specific brain dysfunctions
				Alzheimer’s disease
				Parkinson’s disease
			Autoimmune diseases
			Strokes
			Tumors
	Chapter 17 Neural Dysfunctions, Mental Illness, and Drugs That Affect the Brain
		Looking at the Causes and Types of Mental Illness
			Genetic malfunctions
			Developmental and environmental mental illness
			Mental illness with mixed genetic and developmental components
				Feeling blue: Depression
				Experiencing seizures in the brain: Epilepsy
				Disordered and psychotic thoughts: Schizophrenia
				Obsessing about OCD
		The Promise of Pharmaceuticals
			Typical and atypical antipsychotic medications
			Drugs affecting GABA receptors
			Drugs affecting serotonin
			Drugs affecting dopamine
			Some natural psychoactive substances
Part 5 The Part of Tens
	Chapter 18 Ten (or So) Crucial Brain Structures
		The Neocortex
		The Thalamus, Gateway to the Neocortex
		The Pulvinar
		The Cerebellum
		The Hippocampus
		Wernicke’s and Broca’s Areas
		The Fusiform Face Area
		The Amygdala
		The Lateral Prefrontal Cortex
		The Substantia Nigra (Basal Ganglia)
		The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
	Chapter 19 Ten Tricks of Neurons That Make Them Do What They Do
		Overcoming Neurons’ Size Limit
		Getting the Biggest Bang for the Buck with Dendritic Spines
		Ligand-Gated Receptors: Enabling Neurons to Communicate Chemically
		Getting Specialized for the Senses
		Computing with Ion Channel Currents
		Keeping the Signal Strong across Long Distances
		The Axon: Sending Signals from Head to Toe
		Speeding Things Up with Myelination
		Neural Homeostasis
		Changing Synaptic Weights to Adapt and Learn
	Chapter 20 Ten Promising Treatments for the Future
		Correcting Developmental Disorders through Gene Therapy
		Augmenting the Brain with Genetic Manipulation
		Correcting Brain Injury with Stem Cells
		Using Deep Brain Stimulation to Treat Neurological Disorders
		Stimulating the Brain Externally through TMS and tDCS
		Using Neuroprostheses for Sensory Loss
		Addressing Paralysis with Neuroprostheses
		Building a Better Brain through Neuroprostheses
		Engaging in Computer-Controlled Learning
		Treating Disease with Nanobots
Glossary
Index
EULA