Textbooks on system neuroscience

June 15, 2010 3:09 PM

Does anyone have any recommendations for textbooks on systems, and to a lesser extent cognitive, neuroscience?
posted by SollosQ to Education (5 answers total)

Best answer: This is not TERRIBLY helpful, but it's a start:
From my undergrad days, I have Gazzaniga, Ivry & Magnun's "Cognitive Neuroscience". When I TAed a comparable intro course, we used Kalat's "Biological Psychology. IIRC, the Kalat is better laid-out but the Gazzaniga goes into more depth.

If you're looking for hard-hitting grad-level neuroscience action, I looked on the shelf of an officemate who I'm pretty sure took a systems course. She has two tomes: Principles of Neural Science by Kandel, Schwarz, and Jessell and Fundamental Neuroscience by Squire, et al. One of those MIGHT have been for a cellular/molecular level course. I'll try to confirm if it was one or both.
posted by knile at 6:13 PM on June 15, 2010

My systems class (grad, cogisci/neuroscience department) used Fundamental Neuroscience as well.
posted by heyforfour at 6:40 AM on June 16, 2010

Coming from the Systems angle, Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook is great. But get the Fieldbook, not the dry text-only book.
posted by cross_impact at 9:36 AM on June 16, 2010

Confirmed: both the Kandel & the Squire were used in that systems class. Good luck! Have fun?
posted by knile at 11:46 AM on June 16, 2010

Seconding Kandel, but that really spans everything from cellular to systems, as I recall.

May I ask if you have a background in cellular neuroscience already? Systems is deceptively simple, so you don't really get as much out of it without the knowledge of cellular, in my opinion. Kind of like trying to learn organic chemistry without knowing about electrons, protons, and neutrons. Almost a totally different field, but absolutely critical to understanding.
posted by supercres at 12:49 PM on June 16, 2010