McGraw-Hill Education Principles of Neural Science, Sixth Edition

very good

新型コロナウイルスの感染拡大の影響があったのか、届くのに数か月以上かかってしまいました。しかし、内容は勿論充実しており、BMIなどの目新しい分野の章もしっかり存在していたので良かったです。タイトルに「neural science」とある通り、もちろん神経科学の基礎的な内容がずっと続きますが、精神医学や心理学等の分野を考える上でも非常に重宝します。睡眠や認知等についての神経基盤がこのようにまとめられているととても助かります

El libro viene magnificamente ilustrado y todo su contenido magnificamente explicado.. Llegó pronto a casa (el día despues de solicitarlo) y sin un arañazo, lo cual es de agradecer. Una vez más increible labor de los repartidores de Amazon <3

This thing is a massive 1600 pages. I'm about half-way through it, so feel that I can give it a review at this point. As background, my training is in psychology. I had a couple of courses in undergerad school and one course in grad school that focused on neuroscience. It always interested me. I passed on it as a career direction because I really didn't want to be drilling holes into the heads of small animals for the rest of my life. So I opted for health/social psychology instead. I was a college professor for about 35 years and retired about a dozen years ago. With more time on my hands, I decided to catch up on the fundamentals of neuroscience as they've evolved over the half century since I last took a course. This book is the way I'm doing that. As its size gives away, it's a thorough summation of the basic principles of neuroscience. Each chapter is written by one or more experts in the specific topic of that chapter but it's obvious that the chapters have been edited for uniformity. They all begin with an overview and end with a list of highlights. In between is a fairly detailed discussion of the material that is the focus of the chapter, accompanied by very nice color illustrations that clarify and expand the descriptions of structures, mechanisms, and processes. Following the material requires more than a single undergrad biology course, but really, not a whole lot more. If you're willing to (a) skip over parts that are a bit too dense or (b) keep a tablet by your side to google stuff that you have little or no familiarity with, someone with just undergraduate preparation can probably handle this material fairly easily. I haven't skipped much at all, but did quickly skim a few sections that were getting into the weeds on something that didn't strongly interest me. As far as looking stuff up, refering back to an earlier chapter, while rarely necessary, pretty much covered things. Occasionally, something I read jogged a recollection from a class I had decades ago and, more out of curiosity than necessity, I did some digging via Google to refresh my memory. I also have the advantage of reading this book out of curiosity rather than necessity. I won't be examined on its content. No lives will be endangered if I misremember anything, so it'd a low-pressure exercise for me. There are a staggering number of functional centers and connecting pathways in the brain. A table of each of these centers and a list of what they do would be overwherlming and pretty worthless. What this book does is expose you to the anatomy and physiology of the brain progressively as various brain functions are discussed. In the process, I've revisited brain nuclei and pathways that I'd once learned about but had long since forgotten, as well as many brain regions I don't think I'd ever learned about before. This process is incremental as you go from chapter to chapter and doesn't feel overwhelming. The generally clear writing helps greatly. Kudos to both the authors and the editors. Neuroscience has changed a great deal since I had my last course that would fit under that rubric (although I don't think I ever heard the term "neuroscience" in any of my academic training; It was "physiological psychology," or sensation and perception," or "emotion and motivation" back then). Although this book isn't an "annual review" of the field, it does briefly summarize some classical studies and is certainly more current than my previous grasp of the field. The latest stuff isn't in it, of course, and the descriptions of studies obviously lack the detail of current journal articles. But as an integrative and extensive summation of the principles at the heart of neuroscience, I think this book does a great job. If your goal is to get a fairly detailed overview of the foundational principles of neuroscience, I think this book will deliver that nicely for you.

This book came in perfect condition and is gorgeous; I mean 1600 pages of content and beautifully drawn and consistent drawings and figures. So far, the writing is easily digestible and does what it is supposed to do. The pages are acid-free and feel so good, as does the hardcover exterior.