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<p><strong>Neuroscience</strong> is a field that is devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. Such studies may include the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, and pathology of the nervous system. Traditionally it is seen as a branch of biological sciences. However, recently there has been a surge in the convergence of interest from many allied disciplines, including cognitive- and neuro-psychology, computer science, statistics, physics, and medicine. The scope of neuroscience has now broadened to include any systematic scientific experimental and theoretical investigation of the central and peripheral nervous system of biological organisms. The methodologies employed by neuroscientists have been enormously expanded, from biochemical and genetic analysis of dynamics of individual nerve cells and their molecular constituents to imaging representations of perceptual and motor tasks in the brain.</p>
<p>Neuroscience is at the frontier of investigation of the brain and mind. The study of the brain is becoming the cornerstone in understanding how we perceive and interact with the external world and, in particular, how human experience and human biology influence each other.</p>
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<h2><span class="mw-headline">Overview</span></h2>
<p>The scientific study of the nervous systems underwent a significant increase in the second half of the twentieth century, principally due to revolutions in molecular biology, neural networks and computational neuroscience. It has become possible to understand, in exquisite detail, the complex processes occurring inside a single neuron and in a network that eventually produces the intellectual behavior, cognition, emotion and physiological responses.</p>
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<div class="thumbinner" style="WIDTH: 202px"><img class="thumbimage" height="234" alt="stained neuron" width="200" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Neuron_colored.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/Neuron_colored.jpg/200px-Neuron_colored.jpg" width="200" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Neuron_colored.jpg" />
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stained neuron</div>
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<p>At the systems level, the questions addressed in systems neuroscience include how the circuits are formed and used anatomically and physiologically to produce the physiological functions, such as reflexes, sensory integration, motor coordination, emotional responses, learning and memory, et cetera. In other words, they address how these neural circuits function and the mechanisms through which behaviors are generated. For example, systems level analysis addresses questions concerning specific sensory and motor modalities: how does vision work? How do songbirds learn new songs and bats localize with ultrasound? The related field of neuroethology, in particular, addresses the complex question of how neural substrates underlies specific animal behavior.</p>
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<div class="thumbinner" style="WIDTH: 215px"><img class="thumbimage" height="231" alt="Animation of a stack of horizontal MRI sections of a normal adult human brain" width="213" longdesc="/wiki/Image:User-FastFission-brain.gif" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/User-FastFission-brain.gif" width="213" longdesc="/wiki/Image:User-FastFission-brain.gif" />
<div class="thumbcaption">Animation of a stack of horizontal MRI sections of a normal adult human brain</div>
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<li>[http://neurome.org Neurome.org]</li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://brainmaps.org" rel="nofollow" href="http://brainmaps.org/" rel="nofollow">High-Resolution Cytoarchitectural Primate Brain Atlases</a> </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://www.sfn.org" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sfn.org/" rel="nofollow">Society for Neuroscience</a> </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/" rel="nofollow">Neural Plasticity-Open Access Journal</a> (Hindawi Publishing) </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/books/bv.fcgi?call=bv.View..ShowTOC&rid=neurosci.TOC&depth=2" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?call=bv.View..ShowTOC&rid=neurosci.TOC&depth=2" rel="nofollow">Neuroscience. 2nd ed.</a> by Purves et al (online textbook) </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://www.neurosciencenews.com" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.neurosciencenews.com/" rel="nofollow">Neuroscience News, Books, Links, Forum and Gifts</a> </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html" rel="nofollow" href="http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html" rel="nofollow">Neuroscience for Kids</a> </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://cerebralhealth.com/neuroscienceresearch.php" rel="nofollow" href="http://cerebralhealth.com/neuroscienceresearch.php" rel="nofollow">Brain Research and Information Network B.R.A.I.N.</a> </li> <li><a class="external text" title="http://www.carthage.edu/admissions/majors/index.cfm?ID=23" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carthage.edu/admissions/majors/index.cfm?ID=23" rel="nofollow">Undergraduate Neuroscience major at Carthage College</a> </li>
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