Nolte's The Human Brain

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Previous chapters may have hinted that the parts of the nervous system are interconnected in rigid, immutable ways, but this is far from accurate. The details of the nervous system are much too complex to be completely laid out genetically.…

We seldom perceive things in a completely neutral fashion. Various sights and sounds make us happy, sad, or angry; some tastes and smells are extremely gratifying, others disgusting. Such feelings engendered by sensory inputs are ultimately the result of brains…

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neurons and their interconnections. About 1800 cm 2 (2 ft 2 ) in surface area, the cortex covers the corrugated surface of the cerebral hemispheres in a layer just a few millimeters thick. This…

Photoreceptors are sensitive but slow, and all animals with image-forming eyes have mechanisms to prevent images of interest from moving across the retina too quickly to be analyzed. (Our eyes behave in many respects like cameras with a shutter speed…

Cerebellum means “little brain,” and in a real sense, it is: it accounts for only about 10% of the mass of the brain, but the cerebellum contains as many neurons as all the rest of the central nervous system (CNS)…

In 1817 James Parkinson, an English country physician, published a brief monograph entitled “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” in which he described the symptoms of several individuals who had the disease that now bears his name. Patients with Parkinson's…

Each of us has fewer than a million motor neurons with which to control muscles. Without them, we would be completely unable to interact with the outside world. With them, however, we are capable of an enormous range of complex…

It is clear from everyday experience that humans are a visually oriented species. Although it is arguable which of our senses is most important, loss of vision certainly has a greater impact on humans than loss of, for example, olfaction…