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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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stained neuron</div>
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<td style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; PADDING-RIGHTBOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; FONTPADDING-WEIGHTRIGHT: bold10px; FONT-SIZEFAMILY: 35px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px'Times New Roman',serif; COLOR: #b2b7f2; PADDINGFONT-TOPSIZE: 10px35px; FONT-FAMILYWEIGHT: 'Times New Roman',serifbold; TEXTPADDING-ALIGNTOP: left10px" valign="top" width="20">“</td> <td style="PADDING-RIGHTBOTTOM: 10px4px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-BOTTOMRIGHT: 4px10px; PADDING-TOP: 4px" valign="top">The task of neural science is to explain behavior in terms of the activities of the brain. How does the brain marshal its millions of individual nerve cells to produce behavior, and how are these cells influenced by the environment...? The last frontier of the biological sciences--their ultimate challenge--is to understand the biological basis of consciousness and the mental processes by which we perceive, act, learn, and remember. — Eric Kandel, <em>Principles of Neural science</em>, fourth edition</td> <td style="TEXT-ALIGN: right; PADDING-RIGHTBOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; FONTPADDING-WEIGHTRIGHT: bold10px; FONT-SIZEFAMILY: 36px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px'Times New Roman',serif; COLOR: #b2b7f2; PADDINGFONT-TOPSIZE: 10px36px; FONT-FAMILYWEIGHT: 'Times New Roman',serifbold; TEXTPADDING-ALIGNTOP: right10px" valign="bottom" width="20">”</td>
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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="thumbcaption">Animation of a stack of horizontal MRI sections of a normal adult human brain</div>
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<p>Evidence of trepanation, the surgical practice of either drilling or scraping a hole into the skull with the aim of curing headaches or mental disorders or relieving cranial pressure, being performed on patients dates back to Neolithic times and has been found in various cultures throughout the world. Manuscripts dating back to 5000BC indicated that the Egyptians had some knowledge about symptoms of brain damage.</p>
<p>Early views on the function of the brain regarded it to be a "cranial stuffing" of sorts. In Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, the brain was regularly removed in preparation for mummification. It was believed at the time that the heart was the seat of intelligence. According to Herodotus, during the first step of mummification: 'The most perfect practice is to extract as much of the brain as possible with an iron hook, and what the hook cannot reach is mixed with drugs.'<sup class="noprint Template-Fact"><span style="WHITE-SPACE: nowrap" title="This claim needs references to reliable sourcesÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ since sources since February 2007" style="WHITE-SPACE: nowrap">[<em>citation needed</em>]</span></sup></p>
<p>The view that the heart was the source of consciousness was not challenged until the time of Hippocrates. He believed that the brain was not only involved with sensation, since most specialized organs (e.g., eyes, ears, tongue) are located in the head near the brain, but was also the seat of intelligence. Aristotle, however, believed that the heart was the center of intelligence and that the brain served to cool the blood. This view was generally accepted until the Roman physician Galen, a follower of Hippocrates and physician to Roman gladiators, observed that his patients lost their mental faculties when they had sustained damage to their brains.</p>
<p>In Al-Andalus, Abulcasis, the father of modern surgery, developed material and technical designs which are still used in neurosurgery. Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson's disease and attributed photoreceptor properties to the retina. Avenzoar described meningitis, intracranial thrombophlebitis, mediastinal tumours and made contributions to modern neuropharmacology. Maimonides wrote about neuropsychiatric disorders and described rabies and belladonna intoxication.<sup class="reference" id="_ref-0" class="reference"><font color="#800080">[1]</font></sup></p>
<p>Studies of the brain were became more sophisticated after the invention of the microscope and the development of a staining procedure by Camillo Golgi during the late 1890s that used a silver chromate salt to reveal the intricate structures of single neurons. His technique was used by Santiago Ramón y Cajal and led to the formation of the neuron doctrine, the hypothesis that the functional unit of the brain is the neuron. Golgi and Ramón y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for their extensive observations, descriptions and categorizations of neurons throughout the brain. The hypotheses of the neuron doctrine were supported by experiments following Galvani's pioneering work in the electrical excitability of muscles and neurons. In the late 19th century, DuBois-Reymond, Müller, and von Helmholtz showed neurons were electrically excitable and that their activity predictably affected the electrical state of adjacent neurons.</p>
<p>In parallel with this research, work with brain-damaged patients by Paul Broca suggested that certain regions of the brain were responsible for certain functions. This hypothesis was supported by observations of epileptic patients conducted by John Hughlings Jackson, who correctly deduced the organization of motor cortex by watching the progression of seizures through the body. Wernicke further developed the theory of the specialization of specific brain structures in language comprehension and production. Modern research still uses the Brodmann cytoarchitectonic (referring to study of cell structure) anatomical definitions from this era in continuing to show that distinct areas of the cortex are activated in the execution of specific tasks.</p>
<h2><span class="mw-headline">Allied and Overlapping Fields</span></h2>
<p>Neuroscience, by its very interdiciplinary nature, overlaps with and encompasses many different subjects. Below is a list of related subjects and fields.</p>
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<li>Aphasiology </li>
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<li>Neurolinguistics </li>
<h3><span class="mw-headline">Textbooks</span></h3>
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<li><cite classstyle="bookFONT-STYLE: normal" id="Reference-Bear-2001" styleclass="FONT-STYLE: normalbook">Bear, M.F.; B.W. Connors, and M.A. Paradiso (2001). <em>Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain</em>. Baltimore: Lippincott. ISBN 0-7817-3944-6.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Neuroscience%3A+Exploring+the+Brain&rft.aulast=Bear&rft.aufirst=M.F.&rft.date=2001&rft.pub=Lippincott&rft.place=Baltimore"> </span> </li> <li><cite classstyle="bookFONT-STYLE: normal" id="Reference-Kandel-2000" styleclass="FONT-STYLE: normalbook">Kandel, ER; Schwartz JH, Jessell TM (2000). <em>Principles of Neural Science</em>, 4th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-8385-7701-6.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=%5B%5BPrinciples+of+Neural+Science%5D%5D&rft.aulast=Kandel&rft.aufirst=ER&rft.date=2000&rft.edition=4th+ed.&rft.pub=McGraw-Hill&rft.place=New+York"> </span> </li>
<li>Squire, L. <em>et al.</em> (2003). <em>Fundamental Neuroscience, 2nd edition</em>. Academic Press; ISBN 0-12-660303-0 </li>
<li>Byrne and Roberts (2004). <em>From Molecules to Networks</em>. Academic Press; ISBN 0-12-148660-5 </li>
<h3><span class="mw-headline">Popular works</span></h3>
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<li><cite classstyle="bookFONT-STYLE: normal" id="Reference-Andreasen-2004" styleclass="FONT-STYLE: normalbook">Andreasen, Nancy C. (March 4 2004). <em>Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome</em>. Oxford University Press. 392 pages, 56 halftones & line illus.; 8 color plates, 234x154 mm. ISBN 9780195145090.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Brave+New+Brain%3A+Conquering+Mental+Illness+in+the+Era+of+the+Genome&rft.aulast=Andreasen&rft.aufirst=Nancy+C.&rft.date=2004&rft.pub=Oxford+University+Press.++392+pages%2C+56+halftones+%26+line+illus.%3B+8+color+plates%2C+234x154+mm&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oup.com%2Fuk%2Fcatalogue%2F%3Fci%3D9780195145090"> </span> </li>
<li>Damasio, A. R. (1994). <em>Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.</em> New York, Avon Books. ISBN 0-399-13894-3 (Hardcover) ISBN 0-380-72647-5 (Paperback) </li>
<li>Gardner, H. (1976). <em>The Shattered Mind: The Person After Brain Damage.</em> New York, Vintage Books, 1976 ISBN 0-394-71946-8 </li>
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