Principles of neural science

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1. BalgairNov 2024
   Bear's Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain

   Purves's Neuroscience

   Kandel's Principles of Neural Science (grad level, but really the bible for neuro)

   Dayan and Abbot's Theoretical Neuroscience (good for compneuro)

   The Art of Electronics, 2nd edition (cheating here, but it's good to go back through the fundamentals before going into the edge cases that is neuro)

   In general, AI is so new that there really isn't a good classical text between AI thingys and neuro. It will take time to suss one out and write one.

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2. mattkrauseFeb 2023
   Thanks-that's what we were aiming for!

   Are you interested in anything specific? Neuroscience is an absolutely massive field. At one end of my department, some folks are poking at the atomic structure of individual ion channels; at the other, people are looking at how social factors affect the brain and vice versa. It's hard to think of any one book that does it all justice.

   On the other hand, there's been a flood of interesting books lately, so there's almost certainly something for you. Since you're on HN, you might like Grace Lindsay's Models of the Mind. It's about using math and physics to probe the brain, but it's a nice light read that focuses on analogies; no walls of impenetrable equations. If you like this, there are a ton of books that dive more deeply into the math to read next.

   I've heard good things about Luiz Pessoa's The Entangled Brain, but haven't read it. It's more general neuroscience than focused on applications of math. People love Gyorgy Buzsaki's books Rhythms of the Brain and The Brain from Inside Out. I couldn't really get into them, in part because he was--loudly--wrong about the brain stim stuff in that article--but that's more of a personal beef.

   If you want something more like a textbook, the standard is Kandel's Principles of Neural Science. It touches on almost everything, though often not in a particularly exciting or up-to-date way. It's not the worst book for a class, but it'd be a slog to power through in bed. Instead, I'd recommend Levitan and Kaczmarek's The Neuron: Cell and Molecular Biology. It covers a bit less (individual cells up through small neural networks), but I like the writing a lot more.

   Another approach might be some hybrid science-biographies. These include Lessons from the Lobster, which is about Eve Marder and her work. The lobster stomach is a really fascinating circuit: seemingly simple, but capable of really complex behavior. The principles she worked out there have huge implications for more complex brains (like ours). Similarly, Brain and Visual Perception is about how David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel worked out some of the circuits in primary visual cortex--and won the Nobel Prize. I have not read Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight, but people seem to like it. It's about a brain anatomist realizing that she's having a stroke. Oliver Sacks' books are probably the standard bearer in this category. Some of the explanations are a bit dated, especially in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (understandable, as it's from 1985), but the descriptions of the symptoms are fascinating.

   Some anti-recommendations: I'd avoid Rodger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind. It did get me interested in moving from CS to Neuro, but its explanations are, to put it EXTREMELY charitably, not very mainstream. Jeff Hawkin's book is not nearly as far out there, but his ideas also don't have a lot of traction. Stephen Grossberg's stuff is very polarizing: some ideas are very interesting, but also sometimes presented in ways that don't tie in well with the rest of the field, so I wouldn't start there.

   That's a random walk through my reading list! If you're interested in a particular niche, let me know. There's also cool stuff about drugs, weird animals, sensation, etc...

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3. docdocgooseSep 2022
   Principles of Neural Science by Kandel et al

   Molecular Biology of The Cell by Alberts et al

   Janeway’s Immunobiology

   Robbin’s Pathologic Basis of Disease

   All of these books are extraordinary in their sheer ability to organize thousands of small details into thematic narratives of how life operates.

   They also reveal how hard we humans try to narrate life into tidy, comprehensible themes.

   These books are all of an era (2005-2015), and there are probably newer ones. That said, they are a great guide for non biologists into how experts think things work.

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4. intrasightJul 2022
   Two that I can recommend are Eric Kandel's Principles of Neural Science, and Larry Squire's Fundamental Neuroscience.

   One of the most amazing things in nature are the pentameric ligand-gated ion channels. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412168/

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5. ghotliMar 2021
   That's quite the link. I like to read Kandel 'Principles of Neural Science' because it's amazing. That picture just unfolds from dna in all of us. Fulfills the old adage of "we're just brains riding in skeleton mechs powered by meat"
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6. BalgairOct 2018
   In neuroscience:

   Principles of Neural Science, Fifth Edition (Principles of Neural Science (Kandel)) 5th Edition

   https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kande...

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