(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best neuroscience books

Primer of EEG is a 180 page concise summary of EEG. I used it during a 1 month EEG rotation in residency, and I found it perfect. Most experts in the field like the recommend long reference books, and I totally understand their perspective. But for someone who's not ready to know everything just yet, I think this book is great.

If you are looking for something written for a popular/lay audience, a few good starting points:

Making up the Mind by Chris Frith:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225

Older but particularly relevant for emotion and consciousness- "Descartes error"
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

If you want something from a less mainstream perspective dealing with embodiment and consciousness, you may enjoy Brainstorms by Shaun Gallagher:
http://www.amazon.com/Brainstorming-Views-Interviews-Shaun-Gallagher/dp/1845400232

Hope these help!

I came from a similar background as you, and recently finished a introductory fMRI course designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.This was the book that we used, and I found it to be quite helpful. The first couple of chapters cover some of the basic biophysics involved, and the authors would actually explain the ideas in each chapter twice. The first explanation would cover the core concepts, and a second explanation would be more advanced and technical. I felt like I gained a reasonable foundation from reading between these explanations.

Creating links from neuroscience to ANN learning is actually a hot research topic at the moment so you re in luck. A popular theme is coming up with ways that backpropagation can be implemented by biological neurons e.g. 1 2 3

However don't expect to find a lot of theory about how brains learn. While comp. neuro has a good model for the voltage response and propagation in neurons 4, the knowledge about the neurobiology of learning is very sketchy so you are going to have to become familiar with the learning and memory experimental literature and probably develop your own models.

I'm an first year MSc Physio student. I have found Neuroscience by Krebs (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neuroscience-Lippincotts-Illustrated-Reviews-Lippincott/dp/1451110456/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499336141&sr=8-2&keywords=krebs+neuroscience) to be brilliant. It's got a good amount of detail with useful pictures.

What I'm talking about isn't diffusion (I believe it would be too slow). Apparently it's called electrotonic spread, "The electrotonic potential travels via electrotonic spread, which amounts to attraction of opposite- and repulsion of like-charged ions within the cell".

Khan Academy maybe illustrates it better @ 8:40 (this is not where I got it from).

But, according to Essential Neuroscience it's actually electrons and not sodium ions that move down the axon. Anyhow, there is a real electrical current moving through the axon. It's the only source I can find that mentions electrons (and they don't explain where they come from).

Molecular Cell biology, 4th edition, "At this site the inside of the membrane will have a relative excess of positive charges, principally K+ ions. These ions will tend to move away from the initial depolarization site, thus depolarizing adjacent sections of the membrane. This is called the passive spread of depolarization."

"At the peak of an action potential, passive spread of the membrane depolarization is sufficient to depolarize a downstream segment of membrane. This causes a few Na+ channels in this region to open, thereby increasing the extent of depolarization in this region, causing an explosive opening of more Na+ channels. Thus, propagation of the action potential without diminution is ensured."

"Because voltage-gated Na+ channels remain inactive for several milliseconds after opening, those Na+ channels immediately behind the action potential cannot reopen even though the potential in this segment is depolarized due to passive spread (Figure 21-14). The inability of Na+ channels to reopen during the refractory period ensures that action potentials are propagated unidirectionally from the cell body to the axon terminus..."

Ok let me talk about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For reference I'll be using this. You can find this on TPB if you're really curious.

So basically one of the underlying causes of ASD is a thing called neuroinflammation. This happens when there is excess glutamate in the brain and through an elaborate chain of events causes neurotoxicity via calcium channels in the neurons. No one knows why this happens to ASDs on a molecular level yet, but scientists are pretty close to figuring this out.

So gluten molecules are just the proteins found in wheat. The relevant ones for us are l-glutmine and glutamic acid. Through various processes these at one point become Glutamate and in excess will cause neuroinflammation in the ASD population.

Yes there have been studies on this and he results have been mixed. The only thing these gluten free diet studies for ASDs has proven is that they can't keep little kids off of chocolate cake. Wheat products in the US are in nearly everything you buy so actually doing this study accurately with little kids is nearly impossible.

So the TL;DR is that yes as weird as it sounds, gluten can worsen ASD symptoms but by no means "cure" it. It has nothing to do with the gluten intolerance or digestive issues per say, but with the l-glutamine content.

Greenberg is the go to.

afterwards you should also get this one
and this one for the OR


as far as expectations, expect to not know a lot in the beginning. It's easier to learn things as you see them rather than trying to study everything at once. ICP management has some basic but also some specifics depending on the etiology. Look at every scan on every patient you have and compare to the previous when able, repetition makes you better as it will with most things. Don't shoot from the hip, if you don't know look it up and ask for clarification questions.

I'm not a CC guy, we have neurointensivists for that so I'm of no help there.

I mean really, that one particular link has some unrelated articles, but also has a few that are very on point with this subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Conscious-States-Brain-Changes/dp/0316367540

A lot of my opinions on this subject were formed thanks to reading this book: "The Chemistry of Conscious States: How the Brain Changes Its Mind". It is by J. Allan Hobson.

Really explores the switching between aminergic and cholinergic systems and what exactly that means and also goes in-depth into the memory formation mechanisms during the different states (and why they do not operate so well while you are asleep).

As for anatomy of the human Hippocampus, you could look for this in your library.

This book covers a wide array of topics including human and rat hippocampal formations and processes, spatial learning and quite a bit more. Hope this helps

This is a copypasta from another music related website I visit:

I have had tinnitus in my left ear for nearly 4 years now that has the effect that there is a difference in my hearing of about 25dB SPL @ 8Khz. Its a loud ringing/hissing sound that gets worse if Im tired, stressed or listen to loud music for any length of time. I used to be a sound engineer and would spend hours making music. Now, I cannot last more than about 2-3 hours before my ears tire and I feel fatigued.

It was caused by an old flatmate, who in his infinite wisdom, though it would be really funny to scare me by coming into my room, whilst I was buried in coding a website and bang a saucepan with a wooden spoon near my head. It took him about a month to be convinced that I wasnt messing when I said my ear was still ringing because he only heard the spoon hitting the top of the pan, making a slapping sound, whereas I had the full blast of the tone of it.

I went to my doctor and got referred to an ENT clinic at major London hospital. Through them, I had hearing tests and an MRI scan but they said they couldn't locate any damage and therefore they couldn't treat it. the graph of my hearing test

What I have found from it is examine your diet, music listen and other habits: cut out/down on sugar, caffeine and processed foods. Eat more fresh raw veg and fruit. Exercise a lot and drink plenty of fluids/water.

I also have a scanned PDF of a book that I got that suggests enriched nutrients and raw food diet could help [as it did the author] which I have made available here

You will have a certain degree of 'somatic' sounds (noises produced by the body: blood pumping through your ears, jaw cracking & creaking, etc and is a condition in its own right) but tinnitus, by definition is sound heard by with no definable external nor internal source. Because of that definition, schizophrenic voices also fall into it.

I have another book called Tinnitus Retraining Therapytby a guy called Pawel Jastraboff and he was involved in this website (forgive its 1999 look) called tinnitus.org

A central concept in cyberpunk and hacker culture is the idea of planned obsolescence: Corporations can make more money if they get you to buy their products multiple times instead of just once. This leads to a world where everything is discarded and the wealth gap is very clear between the people who have the new and the people who have the old.

The fact of the matter is that DNA is not our friend. Humans were built to spread our seed and be destroyed. We are a tool that DNA uses to extend it's own life. The human body is amazing in many ways, but it's amazing like a disposable razor is amazing. There's no mechanism to prevent cancer, no mechanism to prevent the development of back problems, and no mechanism to prevent it from withering away like a rotten fruit when it's purpose of reproduction has been served.

The implementation of transhumanism might be flawed, but so are all human endeavors. That's what cyberpunk is about: Figuring out how to deal with a world ruled by technology. Sometimes it doesn't go as smoothly as we imagine. The message of transhumanism is still clear, though: DNA doesn't own this planet any more, we do, and the name of the game is going to stop being reproduction and start being the enjoyment of existence.

Since you seem to be basing your understanding almost entirely on fiction, let me recommend some reading

• The Hidden Pattern by Ben Goertzel (pdf) - on the "patternist" theory of identity, whether a clone of you would really be you or not
  
  
• Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (pdf) - on the singularity, AI, and the ultimate fate of humanity

How much depth do you want? You can learn quite a bit just going through Wikipedia articles. If you want to learn hardcore neuroanatomy, I recommend Blumenfeld's book.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Stimulated-Brain-Enhancement-Non-Invasive/dp/0124047041

$$95
Too Expensive for me...

can anyone do a TLDR? :)

Perhaps From Neuron to Brain might help.

Here's the kindle link for it but it's available via iBooks as well and it's the newer version.

UBC's online neuroanatomy course/resources are phenomenal: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca

I'd also recommend (also by Dr. Krebs who did the online course) Lippincott's for neuroscience: https://www.amazon.com/Lippincott-Illustrated-Reviews-Neuroscience/dp/1605473170

Well as for career options, there are a few typical ones you can go into: Academia (becoming a teacher/professor, often requires MS or PhD), Regulatory (working for the FDA or NIH, often requires PhD I believe, but I could be mistaken), and Research (can be in an academic setting or in industry, usually only requires a BS or MS). Just in case you want to start thinking about what you want to shoot for.


If you have no background in neuro, then I would suggest looking into a basic text book to start off with. I am currently going through this one in preparing to go back to grad school after being out of school for the last five years. You obviously don't need to memorize every detail right now, but familiarizing yourself with the basic concepts/terminology will help if you decide you want to dig deeper.

Here is a thread with some more suggestions to get you started.

To describe it very broad the memory is a certain connection between neurons that holds for an extended periods of time. The chemical-electrical processes in the neuron network are constantly changing their connections between each other and when this connection holds this chemo-electrical signal pattern becomes a memory.

Hallucinogenic drugs basically interfere with neuron interconnection and chemo-electrical reactions in the brain so if we are ELIFying making your computer wildly glitch. Sometimes this process becomes irreversible.

Update: Here's the simple and classic book about this.

https://www.amazon.com/Opiate-Receptors-Antagonists-Contemporary-Neuroscience/dp/1588298817/

https://www.amazon.com/Neurobiology-Opiates-Physiology-Substance-Abuse/dp/0849379326/

https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Clinical-Pharmacokinetics-Pharmacodynamics-Psychopharmacological-ebook/dp/B01CHMORVQ/

Ich würde das hier empfehlen.