Book1988
Eye, Brain, and Vision
David H. Hubel
Walks a general reader through how the visual system builds edges, motion and depth from raw retinal input, using the author's own Nobel-winning experiments as the throughline.
PaidEntry
Systems Neuroscience
Circuits that compute something identifiable.
10 topics · 16 curated works
Topics
- 01Foundations & Overviews
- 02Sensory Coding1
- 03Visual System2
- 04Auditory System2
- 05Somatosensory System2
- 06Olfaction & Taste2
- 07Motor Control2
- 08Spatial Navigation & Place Cells1
- 09Neural Oscillations2
- 10Neuromodulation2
Reading in Systems Neuroscience
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Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
Eye, Brain, and Vision
David H. Hubel · 1988
Walks a general reader through how the visual system builds edges, motion and depth from raw retinal input, using the author's own Nobel-winning…
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Neural Origin of Muscle Synergies
Bizzi & Cheung · 2013
Argues the nervous system controls complex movement by combining a small number of fixed muscle synergies rather than specifying every muscle…
+1 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
Somatic Motor and Sensory Representation in the Cerebral Cortex of Man as Studied by Electrical Stimulation
Penfield & Boldrey · 1937
Maps the body's sensory and motor representation across the human cortex from direct electrical stimulation during surgery, producing the…
+12 more at this level
12 of 16 works
Paper2013
The Neural Origin of Muscle Synergies
Bizzi & Cheung
Argues the nervous system controls complex movement by combining a small number of fixed muscle synergies rather than specifying every muscle independently.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Talk2019
How Your Brain Maps The World
John O'Keefe (The Royal Institution)
Sets out the discovery that hippocampal place cells fire at specific locations and grid cells tile space hexagonally, giving the brain a metric map rather than a list of landmarks.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Paper1937
Somatic Motor and Sensory Representation in the Cerebral Cortex of Man as Studied by Electrical Stimulation
Penfield & Boldrey
Maps the body's sensory and motor representation across the human cortex from direct electrical stimulation during surgery, producing the somatosensory and motor homunculus.
PaidAdvanced
Paper1957
Modality and Topographic Properties of Single Neurons of Cat's Somatic Sensory Cortex
Vernon B. Mountcastle
Establishes that neurons in somatosensory cortex are organised into vertical columns sharing a single receptive field and modality, the founding evidence for cortical columnar organisation.
PaidAdvanced
Book1960
Experiments in Hearing
Georg von Békésy
Reports the physical mechanics of how the cochlea performs frequency analysis via a travelling wave along the basilar membrane, the experimental basis for modern models of hearing.
PaidAdvanced
Paper1962
Receptive Fields, Binocular Interaction and Functional Architecture in the Cat's Visual Cortex
Hubel & Wiesel
Maps orientation-selective, binocularly driven neurons in cat visual cortex into a columnar architecture, establishing that the cortex processes vision through organised functional units rather than a uniform sheet.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper1982
On the Relations Between the Direction of Two-Dimensional Arm Movements and Cell Discharge in Primate Motor Cortex
Georgopoulos, Kalaska, Caminiti & Massey
Shows that the direction of arm movement is encoded not by single motor cortex neurons but by the weighted vector sum of a broadly tuned population, the founding population-coding result.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper1991
A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition
Buck & Axel
Identifies a large family of genes encoding odorant receptors, showing how a limited receptor repertoire could in principle discriminate a vast number of smells.
PaidAdvanced
Paper2004
Neuronal Oscillations in Cortical Networks
Buzsáki & Draguhn
Argues that oscillations at multiple frequency bands, organised in a common architecture across brain regions, are a general mechanism for coordinating neuronal communication.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper2005
An Integrative Theory of Locus Coeruleus-Norepinephrine Function: Adaptive Gain and Optimal Performance
Aston-Jones & Cohen
Proposes that the locus coeruleus norepinephrine system switches the brain between exploitative and exploratory behavioural modes by adjusting neural gain.
PaidAdvanced
Paper2006
Efficient auditory coding
Smith & Lewicki
Shows that filters resembling the auditory nerve's response properties emerge from optimising sparse, efficient codes for natural sound statistics.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
In order written
1937 – 2019- 1937Somatic Motor and Sensory Representation in the Cerebral Cortex of Man as Studied by Electrical StimulationPenfield & Boldrey
- 1957Modality and Topographic Properties of Single Neurons of Cat's Somatic Sensory CortexVernon B. Mountcastle
- 1960Experiments in HearingGeorg von Békésy
- 1982On the Relations Between the Direction of Two-Dimensional Arm Movements and Cell Discharge in Primate Motor CortexGeorgopoulos, Kalaska, Caminiti & Massey
- 1988Eye, Brain, and VisionDavid H. Hubel
- 1991A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for Odor RecognitionBuck & Axel
- 2004Neuronal Oscillations in Cortical NetworksBuzsáki & Draguhn
- 2005An Integrative Theory of Locus Coeruleus-Norepinephrine Function: Adaptive Gain and Optimal PerformanceAston-Jones & Cohen
- 2006Efficient auditory codingSmith & Lewicki
- 2006The Receptors and Cells for Mammalian TasteChandrashekar, Hoon, Ryba & Zuker
- 2006Rhythms of the BrainGyörgy Buzsáki
- 2011Sound Texture Perception via Statistics of the Auditory Periphery: Evidence from Sound SynthesisMcDermott & Simoncelli
- 2012Neuromodulation of Neural Circuits: Back to the FutureEve Marder
- 2013The Neural Origin of Muscle SynergiesBizzi & Cheung
- 2019How Your Brain Maps The WorldJohn O'Keefe (The Royal Institution)