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    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain's Involvement in Everyday Activities
    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain's Involvement in Everyday Activities
    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain's Involvement in Everyday Activities
    Ebook236 pages2 hours

    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain's Involvement in Everyday Activities

    By Jennifer L. Larimore

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain’s Involvement in Everyday Activities examines how our brain works in everyday activities like sleeping, eating, love, and exercise. Many want to better understand how the brain works, but the terminology and jargon of books can be overwhelming. The book covers the basics taught in an introductory neurobiology course designed for anyone new to the neuroscience field, including non-neuroscientists. While each of the chapters explore the brain in a normal state, Neuroscience Basics also discusses disruptions of the normal state—psychosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, learning disorders, etc. This book breaks down the topics into language that is more accessible while making the neuroscience topics fun and relevant.

    • Provides basic understanding of neuroscience topics that are part of everyday life
    • Provides basic diagrams and descriptions of some basic anatomy
    • Explores and explains current research in each of the chapters and topics
    • Examines basics that are taught in an introductory neuroscience course to provide working knowledge of how the brain works for non-neuroscientists
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAcademic Press
    Release dateMay 25, 2017
    ISBN9780128110171
    Neuroscience Basics: A Guide to the Brain's Involvement in Everyday Activities
    Author

    Jennifer L. Larimore

    Dr. Larimore is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and then went on to a post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University. After her post-doctoral fellowship, she started her teaching career at Agnes Scott College. Her research focuses on the cellular mechanisms of neurodevelopment.

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    • 3/5
      This is very, very light. If you have any medical background this book is not for you.

    Book preview

    Neuroscience Basics - Jennifer L. Larimore

    all!

    Preface

    Maybe you are one of those nerds who loves listening to podcasts about the latest scientific discoveries and you want to better understand how the brain works. Or maybe you are walking alongside a loved one diagnosed with brain disorder that you would like to understand a little better. Maybe you are one of those science nerds trying to get a head start on your introduction to neuroscience class.

    No matter what is driving your interest in the brain, you’ve come to a good space to discover more about the brain outside of the classroom. There are many amazing textbooks that guide students through the basics of neurobiology. But this book is aimed at guiding anyone interested in how the brain works through some of the basic topics covered in an introductory neuroscience class—minus a lot of the jargon, quizzes, tests, projects, and mathematical equations.

    Another way to view this books is a cliff notes version of the major textbooks used to teach introductory neuroscience. If you ever want to dive deeper, there are references at the end of each chapter that can help you with that.

    Our days are intricate, and activities during the day are also complex. So how does our brain work throughout a typical day? How does the brain function during some of these basic aspects that we encounter in a daily routine?

    We will discuss what normal function looks like and what happens when things don’t go according to plan. When we explore some of the diseases, I will mention some movies or documentaries that chronicle that disease. While reading about the disease symptoms and what occurs in the brains of people with these diseases helps our understanding, these documentaries and movies allow us to see the human side of the disease and what it is like to a person with that disorder. And the movies listed are in no way an exhaustive list.

    On the science end of this book, I will unapologetically use the metric system in this book. I live in the metric system. I weigh things in grams and my glassware in my lab is in the metric system. Scientists love acronyms. The hard part with science acronyms is figuring out when you pronounce it like a word, or individually say each letter. I will point that out throughout this book.

    And who am I that I can offer light on these topics? Good question! I always encourage my students to consider the source of the information, and you should do nothing less. I am a scientist and a professor at a liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. My first time touching a brain was in high school. I was so nervous that my palms were a little sweaty, which made the powder in the latex gloves create a paste on my skin. There in my hands was a human brain. It was so amazing, squishy yet not falling apart, and so complex. While the smell in the cadaver lab reeked of formaldehyde which made me a little light headed, I was hooked on studying the brain. (Shout out to my AP Biology teacher, Mrs. Bobbitt! Thank you for introducing me to such a fascinating area of study!)

    When I was in high school and college, I thought I wanted to be a physician. As I shadowed physicians, I realized that my brain did not really think the way physicians think. I started working for a science lab after college until I could figure out what I wanted to do. In that lab, I realized how amazing scientific research was and that my brain was definitely wired to think like a researcher. I applied to a Ph.D. program and after 5 years of training. I graduated with my Ph.D. in Neurobiology. I did postdoctoral training in the cell biology of neurodevelopmental disorders as well as in science education. After my post-doctoral fellowship, I began teaching and conducting research at the small liberal arts college I am at today. All that to say, I have sat under great instructors who have explained these topics well and I have taught these topics at the undergraduate level.

    My love of the brain is not first generation. I am at least a second-generation brain lover (in a non-zombie way, of course). My dad researches clinical anesthesia. My mom studies and teaches the psychology of early childhood education. And, the cherry on top of my neuroscience lineage is a pet. We had a family pet named after a structure of the of brain, the synapse. I have a rich nerd lineage.

    Now, let’s learn about what the brain does everyday.

    Chapter 1

    How to Build a Human Brain

    Keywords

    Brain development; brain injury; organization of the nervous system; Down syndrome; autism; schizophrenia

    Contents

    Summary 1

    1.1 What Is the Brain? 2

    1.2 Overview of Brain Development 2

    1.3 Brain Development Steps 3

    1.3.1 Step 1: Creation and Closing of the Neural Tube (Neurulation) 3

    1.3.2 Step 2: Birth and Growth of Cells That Could Become a Lot of Things (Precursor Cells) and Step 3: Cells Find Their Proper Location (Migration) 5

    1.3.3 Step 4: Precursor Cells Figure Out What Kind of Cell They Are Going to Be (Differentiation) 6

    1.3.4 Step 5: Connections Between Different Cells Are Made—The Brain Is Starting to Be Wired Together (Targeting/Synaptogenesis) 6

    1.4 What Purpose Does Human Childhood Serve? Back to the Sandbox 7

    1.5 Organization of the Nervous System 8

    1.5.1 The Seven Major Divisions of the CNS 8

    1.5.2 The Four Lobes 9

    1.5.3 Pack It All in There 10

    1.5.4 Protection: Bones and CSF 10

    1.6 What Happens When the Brain Is Damaged or Development Doesn’t Go According to the Plan? 11

    1.6.1 What Happens When the Brain Is Damaged? 11

    1.6.2 What Happens When Development Does Not Go According to Plan? 12

    1.7 Conclusions 16

    Bibliography 17

    Summary

    In order for us to understand how the brain works during a normal day, we must first understand what is a brain and how does the brain develop during pregnancy and childhood. During brain development, the brain is organized so that the daily functions carried out by the brain are organized and efficient. Finally, we will cover a few of the disorders that can occur when development does not go according to plan.

    1.1 What is the Brain?

    In order to understand how the brain works, we need to understand what the brain is. The term brain usually refers to the tissue found within a skull that generates behavior. The mind usually refers to personality, opinions, experiences, and memories. There is an age-old philosophical debate arguing the brain and the mind are the same thing versus they are separate things. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Plato (428–348 BCE) argued that the soul of a person was the center of intelligence or wisdom and that the soul was not something physical; therefore, the mind and the brain were different. Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher who believed that the mind controlled consciousness and self-awareness and was separate from the brain, but the brain was the seat of intelligence. Another side of the debate is given by a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), Marvin Minsky (1927–2016). In the early 1970s, Minsky was working in an AI lab at MIT where he developed with others the Society of the Mind Theory. The theory was published in Minsky’s book in 1986—The Society of the Mind. Minsky stated that minds are simply what the brains do. There are many more philosophers and researchers who have weighed in on this debate spanning several centuries. While this interesting debate continues, we will direct our focus on the physical tissue inside the skull, the

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