Life & Health Sciences
Neuroscience
The organ that produces mind — studied from ion channels up to consciousness.
10 fields · 88 topics · 10 curated works
Fields within Neuroscience
Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience
10Neurons as electrical and chemical devices.
Neuronal Structure · Membrane Potentials · Action Potentials · Ion Channels · Synaptic Transmission
Neuroanatomy
9The wiring diagram, at the level we currently have it.
Cortical Organisation · Subcortical Structures · Basal Ganglia · Limbic System · Cerebellum
Systems Neuroscience
9Circuits that compute something identifiable.
Sensory Coding · Visual System · Auditory System · Somatosensory System · Olfaction & Taste
Cognitive Neuroscience
9Mapping mental functions onto neural substrates.
Attention · Working Memory · Long-Term Memory Systems · Language & the Brain · Executive Function
Computational Neuroscience
9Modelling the brain as an information-processing system.
Neuron Models · Network Models · Neural Coding Theory · Learning Rules · Hebbian Plasticity
Behavioural & Affective Neuroscience
8Motivation, reward and emotion at the circuit level.
Reward Systems · Dopamine & Motivation · Stress Response · Fear & the Amygdala · Addiction Neurobiology
Developmental & Plastic Brain
7How brains build and rebuild themselves.
Neurogenesis · Axon Guidance · Critical Periods · Experience-Dependent Plasticity · Adolescent Brain Development
Sleep & Consciousness
9The states the brain moves between, and the hard problem underneath.
Sleep Architecture · Circadian Regulation of Sleep · Dreaming · Sleep Deprivation Effects · Anaesthesia & Unconsciousness
Neuroimaging & Methods
9The instruments — and their well-documented limitations.
fMRI · EEG & MEG · PET Imaging · Electrophysiology · Optogenetics
Clinical & Applied Neuroscience
9What goes wrong, and what can be done.
Neurodegenerative Disease · Neurodevelopmental Disorders · Neuropsychiatric Disorders · Epilepsy Mechanisms · Pain Neuroscience
Reading in Neuroscience
10Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
- BookThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a HatOliver Sacks, 1985
Clinical case studies that reveal the brain's functional architecture by showing precisely what breaks.
- BookThe Brain That Changes ItselfNorman Doidge, 2007
Popularised adult neuroplasticity through case studies — genuinely important, and read alongside the criticism that it overstates the ceiling.
- BookWhy We SleepMatthew Walker, 2017
Argues sleep is the foundational health behaviour — read alongside the published critiques of its statistical claims.
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
- BookBehaveRobert Sapolsky, 2017
Explains a single act by working outward from the second before it to the evolution behind it, and refuses any single level as the cause.
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
- BookPrinciples of Neural ScienceKandel, Schwartz & Jessell, 1981
The reference that unified cellular neurophysiology with cognition, and the reason the field speaks one language rather than three.
- BookTheoretical NeurosciencePeter Dayan & L. F. Abbott, 2001
Treats neural coding and plasticity as mathematics rather than metaphor, and is the standard entry point to computational work.
- PaperA Quantitative Description of Membrane CurrentAlan Hodgkin & Andrew Huxley, 1952· 45 pages
Models the action potential with differential equations that predicted it quantitatively before the channels were known.
- BookCognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the MindGazzaniga, Ivry & Mangun, 1998
The standard text on mapping mental operations onto neural systems, written by people who know how weak most such mappings are.
- BookNeuroanatomy Through Clinical CasesHal Blumenfeld, 2002
Teaches the structure of the nervous system backwards from the deficits that localise damage, which is how the anatomy becomes memorable.
- BookFunctional Magnetic Resonance ImagingHuettel, Song & McCarthy, 2004
The standard methods text, and unusually clear that fMRI measures blood flow rather than thought — which most reporting on it forgets.