Textbooks for neuroscience?
Started by jram2323
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The purves book was one of our reference books for our neuro course. I found it helpful.
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Purves is really dense and seems more like it was written for a neuroscience grad student. I used the Haines atlas and Blumenfeld text for neuro first year and did fine. Seriously though, buy or download the Blumenfeld book from the money you get selling Purves. It's a fantastic book and the cases at the end of chapters really help nail down difficult concepts.
Maybe textbooks aren't for everyone, but I cringe when I read about medical students using Wikipedia as a study resource.
+2 for blumenfeld
i disagree with this, i love reading from good textbooks. Loved lipincotts biochem, Goljan/Robbins, Nelsons, Blueprint series. I love everything.
Why? I use wikipedia all the time. It's not always the most reliable source but the explanations tend to be well written and it's a decent way to jog your memory for those things that you learned but don't quite remember.
We used this text: http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Neurobiology-Peggy-Mason-PhD/dp/0195339975/.
It helped that the author was also our professor, but personally I found the text to be a great review. It's a little "soft" - it's not written like your typical facts-only text - but I thought it was a great text. It explains things concisely and in an easily comprehensible manner. For what it's worth, though, my only knowledge of neuroscience going into medical school was what action potentials are and that there's a brain, so take it for what you will. I really needed a "back to basics" text since I knew next to nothing.
My only issue with the book is that the figures could be improved as they tend to be pretty busy. But it's a text that is easily accessible and not an absolute pain in the ass to read.
It helped that the author was also our professor, but personally I found the text to be a great review. It's a little "soft" - it's not written like your typical facts-only text - but I thought it was a great text. It explains things concisely and in an easily comprehensible manner. For what it's worth, though, my only knowledge of neuroscience going into medical school was what action potentials are and that there's a brain, so take it for what you will. I really needed a "back to basics" text since I knew next to nothing.
My only issue with the book is that the figures could be improved as they tend to be pretty busy. But it's a text that is easily accessible and not an absolute pain in the ass to read.
Blumenfeld's was amazing. It's one of the few textbooks I used during med school and it's so well-written, that I nearly read it cover-to-cover. That's how good of a book it is. Part of why it's so good is that, even though it's a relatively long book, it doesn't read like a textbook. You go through it pretty quickly and the clinical cases you work through at the end of each chapter really reinforce all the important points. It made neuroanatomy into one of my strongest subjects. I highly recommend Blumenfeld's.
I glanced at Purves and wasn't a fan of it. Never read the book linked by Nick, but I would most likely still prefer Blumenfeld's.
I glanced at Purves and wasn't a fan of it. Never read the book linked by Nick, but I would most likely still prefer Blumenfeld's.
Wikipedia is still relatively infalliable. People act like anyone can edit wikipedia and post that like " IgA is the immunoglobulin responsible for allergic reactions." Well yes that's possible, but it's going to be edited in a few minutes back to the correct answer. It's not like it isn't checked thoroughly. It's a pretty high quality information site... I'm curious as to someone producing a wikipedia page that is blatantly inaccurate. I'd say that a lot of times they are much more organized than typical academic sites, which make following a flow of information much easier. Honestly I've yet to wikipedia something and then later decide it was incorrect.
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Hello, Did you use this approach, yourself? I would like to know how much of Snell to go over since my school doesn't go over neuro that well. Should I go over the entire book with najeeb for step 1?
