Fundamental Neuroscience

by Larry R. Squire (editor), Darwin Berg (Editor), Floyd E. Bloom (Editor)

Fundamental Neuroscience, 3rd Edition introduces graduate and upper-level undergraduate students to the full range of contemporary neuroscience. Addressing instructor and student feedback on the previous edition, all of the chapters are rewritten to make this book more concise and student-friendly than ever before. Each chapter is once again heavily illustrated and provides clinical boxes describing experiments, disorders, and methodological approaches and concepts. A companion web site contains test questions, and an imagebank of the figures for ready use in presentations, slides, and handouts. Capturing the promise and excitement of this fast-moving field, Fundamental Neuroscience, 3rd Edition is the text that students will be able to reference throughout their neuroscience careers! New to this * 30% new material including new chapters on Dendritic Development and Spine Morphogenesis, Chemical Senses, Cerebellum, Eye Movements, Circadian Timing, Sleep and Dreaming, and Consciousness* Companion website with figures, web links to additional material, and test questions* Additional text boxes describing key experiments, disorders, methods, and concepts* Multiple model system coverage beyond rats, mice, and monkeys* Extensively expanded index for easier referencing

Genres: Neuroscience, Science, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Reference, Psychology, Biology

1277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1998

About the author

Larry Squire is a Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews

[Tamer Gezici]

Our cellular and molecular neuroscience course (grad level) was using this book. Despite having a well established foundation within these topics, I had trouble reading this book.

Biological sciences heavily rely on visual representations, this is mainly due to the abstract concepts which are difficult to comprehend by simply reading, we need to visualize things to better understand them.

This book has the worst figures I've seen so far. They are so sloppily drawn that it only causes more confusion. Some of the figure descriptions contain terms that are not even drawn and visible on the figure. And you won't be surprised to find parts of the figure which are not even discussed in the figure description to start off with -- this causes confusion and wastes the reader's time. I would go as far as saying that, with this quality this book is not worth your money.

Unfortunately the text is also at the sub par level. The expectation of this book is to give a general understanding of fundamental neuroscience, but it can not form an edifice because they seem to trade brevity to conciseness, hence an incapability to start from the real fundamentals. The text and the contents do not build up from the foundation, instead it directly jumps from the middle, assuming you know the concepts, hence you are not able to form a proper foundation.

There are much better books out there which discuss similar things with better figures and text, such as Kandel's book.

It is not that difficult to make nice figures. The authors should focus on better figures for the upcoming editions.

[Chris]

Like the best of biology textbooks, impeccable formatting, exemplary editing, and many, many figures.

However, as big as it is, there's not much detail and I somehow came away feeling not much better informed. (Maybe because I don't care about vision.)

[Liam O'Leary]

Useful textbook for behavioural or systems neuroscientists. Chapters are written by recognisable experimenters and are well referenced summaries on the more behavioural side of things. Maybe I'm a bit biased in that I particularly appreciate that it is the first major textbook to make a good chapter on human physiological consciousness (sleep).

[Amy]

Awesome reference. I like this book, but the figures aren't the best. I skipped the chapter on breathing. Not that interesting to me.

[Julie]

OK. I admit, I didn't make it through the whole thing. The library made me give it back before I could finish it. C'mon, it was like over 1000 pages! But really good.

[Evander]

I started this in 2016 before starting my Masters research and just finished now, lol.