Reddit reviews Neuroscience

kandel
bear
purves
martin

Each of these books is aimed at a different audience, but this should get you started.

Let me explain why I brought up dyslexia as a common comorbidity of having problems expressing yourself and adhd, but first lets talk about language. I will get back to dyslexia and ADHD. Do note while my post is long, I provide lots of links to pictures.

I am going to be using a lot of images from a biology textbook called Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavorial, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. Mostly from Chapter 19 which deals with language, while I am going to provide specific images you may find it useful to read the visual summary if you want more info.

http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html

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Put simply to do language you are going to use multiple regions of the brain together as a circuit. See here

http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/vs1905.png

You are going to use areas in the back of the brain tied to vision, then you are going to pass that information to a multisensory processing area where your brain combines the senses and figures out what to do (aka you are forming the visual images in your mind before you think of the words that correspond to the visual images). You are then going to pass the information once again to a multisensory processing area but this area is more auditory based, followed by you passing the information to a specific area of the frontal lobe that is very close to the prefrontal areas which is tied to language, but also attention, sequencing of data, and response inhibition (stopping impulsivity) but also activation (aka release the brake and now go). This information is then passed to premotor and supplementary motor areas which is then passed to the motor areas. And during all these steps there are inbetween fine tunning by the subcortical brain areas such as the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.

Now I was trying to explain all of that without using medical terms but here is the names for those brain areas

http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-07-0.jpg


 

 

And here is a diagram that compares speaking a heard word and speaking a word you read off a piece of paper. When you are composing inside of your head without mental feedback and you are imaging what you are going to say your thought process looks more like speaking a word you read off a piece of paper for you use more of the visual areas to visualize in your mind's eye what you are going to do and say.

http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-09-0.jpg


 

 

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Now we know things like head injuries and lesions to specific brain injuries to specific brain injuries can all disrupt speech but if the area is localized to specific regions you may only have some problems with certain aspects of language. When language problems are caused by some form of trauma we call this aphasia.

http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Table-19-01-0.jpg


 

 

And people with different types of aphasia may have different problems. Like a person with expressive aphasia may know what they want to say and they can draw what they want to say but they can't find the words for it. While people with receptive aphasia have problems understanding language. Now receptive aphasia can be more than this where people accidentally skip words in their explanations that are crucial in the sentence, or they have anomia where they know what they want to say (the word is on the tip of their tongue) but they can't remember it, or they do an unintentional word subsitution subsituting another word with a similar sound or meaning, sometimes they mess up not the grammar of the sentence but the word tense, or use the wrong pronoun (like her vs she)

• A subtype of this with additional issues with the left and right half of the back of the brain not talking as well as they should is Dysprosody sometimes called foreign accent syndrome for you do not talk with the local accent / family accent. People with dysprosody have problems with the timing of sounds and things like rhythm, cadence, pitch, and movement of words. They can't tell when you are inflecting or not. This is quite important for they do not get a lot of important information in communication such as emotional tone and inflection which can rapidly changing the meaning of something. Most humans are annoyed by synthetic computer speak for it just sounds wrong, now imagine if everyone spoke like that and you were not familiar with what most of us would consider normal speaking.
  
   
  
   
  
  Now all of these issues I described were studied in people with head injuries. That said we see much the same pattern of behavior with many different types of disorders, one of which is autism, but another of which and is completely separate is dyslexia.
  
  Now with dyslexia many brain regions are implicated and some of them are the same areas I have shown above
  
  http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html (go to slide 6)
  
  In many forms of dyslexia you are not using the back of the brain areas tied with the early visual information which is passed to the angular gyrus which is passed to the wernicke area. See picture
  
  http://www.hoperesourcecentre.com/wp-content/uploads/Brain-Illustration-CellfieldCanada.jpg
  
  And you are trying to compensate for all of this information with actually using more of the frontal lobe to compensate for these areas. Well the frontal lobe is not designed to do such a thing its arrangement and types of nerve cells are different.
  
   
  
   
  
  Now its not just that picture I showed you, its also some of the subcortical areas such as these areas I am about to post here
  
  http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-15-0.jpg
  
  Involving the thalamus and an area known as the pulvinar, as well as certain areas of the brainstem, and certain areas of the cerebellum mainly vermis 6 and vermis 7 (often labeled VI and VII)
  
  http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/156522/fnins-09-00296-HTML/image_m/fnins-09-00296-g002.jpg
  
  These parts of the cerebellum are used for multiple functions but they are often called the occular motor areas of the cerebellum. They are also involved with the control of attention and shifting smoothing from one object to another for one of the purposes of the cerebellum is to "fill in the blanks" between gaps. Imagine you were watch a film but instead of watching a video you were seeing slide by slide, well the cerebellum along with the thalamus and brain stem regions are used in the predicition of what is going to happen next and smooth movements of the eyes, while other areas in the frontal lobe are more involved with figuring out these things are important so why don't we set this as the new priority of what to look at and the rest of the brain figures out how best to move there.
  
  https://kin450-neurophysiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg/393831860/480x346/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg
  
   
  
   
  
  Now if you have not probably figured out there is a connection to all of these brain regions with ADHD. Some ADHD people have these issues, but if you have these issues you are also more likely to have ADHD.
  
  If you look at the previous chapter 18 of Biological Psychology you will see this picture on slide 6
  
  http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-16-0.jpg
  
  There are two attention networks here. The top attention network is known as the frontal parietal control network where it controls and and it also modulates the dorsal attention/perception network. While a second bottom network in orange involves the frontal lobe and connects to areas shared both with the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe where they meet and the surrounding areas, this bottom attention network is more with detecting new things and novel things, while the top network keeps you on track and looks for the goals held within working memory to solve the problems.
  
  If you have not noticed the same areas of the brain that make it hard to express onceself with language, are also the same areas that are common in dyslexia, and are the intersection of two of key networks tied with attention (now there are more than those two networks I just showed you with ADHD but now you understand why there is a connection.)
  
  (Now most of pictures I linked to came from Biological Psychology by Breedlove and Watson, this is an introductory college text meant for undergraduate use. It will not go into all the stuff involving the brain with attention and such, other books made by the same publishing company (Sinaeur) but done by other authors are better if you are mainly wanting to talk about attention instead of language such as
  
  Sensation and Perception
  
  Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases
  
  Dale Purves Neuroscience 5th Edition
  
  And Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Purves text isn't that easy but a great and thorough introduction.
  
• Gazzaniga's text is fantastic but less on the biology side of things.
  
• Others have mentioned Kandel's text but I don't think that's a good first text for anyone wanting to "dip their toes" in.
  
• Someone else also mentioned the Bear text, which is very good.
  
  Those are really all you'll need; from there you will find things on your own or from professors.

Neurobiology with Dr. Xu-Friedman was probably my favorite class, and he is probably my favorite professor. It can be a challenging class, but it's worth it if you enjoy neuroscience.

When I took it, we used Purves - Neuroscience 5th Edition .

The book is definitely needed, as it really helps to reinforce what they lecture on. If you're looking to get ahead before the semester begins, I think he follows the first few chapters tightly. If I recall correctly, he starts with some basic neuroanatomy, and then jumps into electrophysiology (similar to what you did in Bio 213 physiology lab, except in more detail) and receptor kinetics.

If Dr. Medler is also teaching it, she can be somewhat abrasive and difficult, but you can still do well if you go to lecture and pay attention.

Kandel is a very comprehensive neuroscience textbook with a lot of good figures as well as descriptions of experimental evidence. The most recent version came out just last year, so it is very current.

Purves also contains excellent figures but concepts are delivered on a more basic level, probably better suited for undergraduate/non-research perspective.

Here is the mobile version of your link

My school typically recommends Bear's textbook for systems-level information and Purves' Neuroscience for cellular stuff. I prefer Purves because it actually covers both subjects and it goes more in-depth on the molecular topics!

If you want to spend some money, https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Fifth-Dale-Purves/dp/0878936955/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me= is a perfect resource. This was our textbook for neurobio in college and I still find myself referencing it. It's possible you could find the PDF somewhere online, I haven't looked. If you have a little background in cell bio, this would be a great place to start learning.

Beyond that, I agree with the suggestions of /u/Hypercuboid and /u/Noobsessed.

If you are getting information off of forums (about pathways, interactions, etc.), make sure you do your own research, ask for or check sources, and try to understand the mechanisms. Wikipedia rabbit holes can sometimes help with this in the beginning, and can provide you with reliable sources/resources to follow up on. Keep in mind that the answers are almost always not as simple as people portray them. Many MOAs are not fully understood, especially with nootropics. That's why some refer to these substances as RCs and us as guinea pigs; because, in large part, that is true.