Brief+introduction

= Introduction =

Neuroscience is the study of the mind, behavior, and the brain. Naturally, it is an extension of psychology, biology, and many other fields that have provided us key media type="custom" key="19030768"principles for understanding how the brain functions. However, the brain is unique in the following way: The activity of neural cells can consistently predict behavior or the lack thereof, therefore abstract constructs based on observations of behavior are not sufficient to understanding how the mind works. Alternatively, it can not simply be the expression of DNA, synthesis of proteins, firing of neurons, or even the correlative activity of certain brain regions that will enlighten us to the richness of mental life. However, the relationship between the sheer complexity of the brains 10 11 neurons and the endless creativity and adaptability of the human brain makes this research almost an obligatory endeavor.

Neurobiology is itself couched in the premise of [|materialist]philosophy, that the mind is an emergent property of physical neural processes acting in unison to provide the entire spectrum of human experience and action. Evidence for this has existed from the dawn of humancivilization.[| Egyptian physicians] have noted since 3000 BC that brain injury can lead to paralysis and other sensory/motor deficits. In fact, the first recorded use of a word for "Brain" was in Egyptian hieroglyphs translated by the in the Edwin Smith papyrus. However, in this historical context brains were not considered the seat of the 'soul', and were discarded after death.

The following 4+ millenia were gripped by Ventricular theories (typically with vital fluids or gases) of brain function, which persisted until the 16th-17th century. Although the accuracy of the brains gross anatomy was improving, particularly with the work of [|Galen], and later [|Vesalius], little was known about the constitutive units of the brain. The 19th century ushered in an era of explosive technological development and the beginning of a new age for brain science. With the advent of microscopy and the timeless works of Santiago Ramon Y Cajal, the age of modern neuroscience began. media type="custom" key="19030754"Also in the 19th century, Paul Broca reported on patient "Tan" who had discrete language deficits ([|aphasia]) associated with syntax, solidifying the idea that there was a possibility of true localization for very specific functions on the surface of the cerebral cortex. At the cellular level, the psychologist Donald Hebb in the late 1940's provided a seminal and influential framework for bridging the seemingly unfathomable gap between psychological phenomena and brain tissue. The principle generally stated, is that in a 'cell assembly' when one neuron //persistently// influences another neuron, a change will occur so that the influence increases over time.

In the words of Donald Hebb: //"Let us assume then that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or "trace") tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability. The assumption can be precisely stated as follows: When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both of cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased" [|Citation]//

Summarized in a way many of you have surely heard before, "Cells that fire together wire together" (Carla Shatz, Stanford)//.// This simple principle drives the investigations of thousands of researchers world wide and has provided a theoretical basis for the neuroscientific conception of learning and memory in the form of synaptic 'long term potentiation'. media type="custom" key="19030782"

In this class, you can expect to walk away with your own foundation on how neurons grow, processes information, and communicate with one another (as yours surely will as you are learning). You will learn the basics of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and systems neuroscience which will provide you with the vocabulary to understand the primary literature. The paper presentations, projects, and labs will provide you with some context, and a syntax to put together the raw facts into a coherent concept of what the brain is all about and it will be up to you, in the future, to craft your own essays of the mind.

(An exhaustive review of the history of our understanding of the brain is beyond the scope of this course and can be examined [|elsewhere])

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TL;DR Check on this video from Brainfacts.org on the history of neuroscience http://www.brainfacts.org/in-society/in-society/articles/2011/the-ascent/