For all courses in functional and clinical neuroscience.

This text is designed to help students understand the nervous system structures and functions that allow for complex neurophysiological processing in support of human functions and behavior. Students are guided through learning the vocabulary of contemporary neuroscience, understanding the nervous system’s structural organization and communications mechanisms, and learning how structures are linked anatomically and functionally to mediate specific behaviors. To facilitate learning, this text builds incrementally on basic information to introduce increasingly detailed and complex structures, functions, and terminology. As students proceed, they develop working knowledge for predicting neurological problems associated with specific diseases or injury, and analyzing appropriate interventions.

Hallmark Features

Comprehensive coverage–including neuroscience terminology, the nervous system’s three dimensional structure, communications mechanisms, linkages, and resulting human functions and behavior

• Provides students with a reliable and up-to-date single source reference to the entire field of functional and clinical neuroscience

Functional and clinical correlates–presented at the appropriate degree of complexity, to reflect what the student has already learned about neuroanatomy and neurophysiology

• Helps students manage the complexity of learning modern neuroscience, drawing concurrently from each area of knowledge

Examples in every chapter–clearly illustrating the clinical relevance of the concepts discussed

• Helps students connect essential scientific concepts with the realities faced by patients

Chapter-ending activities–giving students hands-on practice applying the concepts they have learned

• Helps students integrate and absorb critical concepts and gain an even deeper understanding of clinical relevance

Definitions throughout, plus a complete glossary at the end of the book–providing explanations of terms wherever and whenever students need them

• Helps students overcome the challenge of mastering the neurosciences’ extensive and unfamiliar terminology

Fundamental nervous system organizational principles and aspects of development–including basic structure, cellular organization, types of cells, and the neurophysiological communication that is the basis of brain function

• Gives students the foundational knowledge about brain structure and function that will underlie everything else they learn about neuroscience

In depth introduction to the spinal cord, brainstem, diencephalon, cerebellum, and cerebral hemisphere–including coverage of the blood supply of each of these five major subdivisions of the central nervous system

• Offers students deeper and more useful insight into the structure of the nervous system and its relationship to the blood supply

Introduction to key CNS systems, built anatomically for easier understanding–including sensory systems (built from spinal cord to cerebral cortex) and motor systems (built from cerebral cortex to spinal cord)

• Teaches key CNS systems intuitively, for easier student understanding

Coverage of sensory and motor systems that innervate head and neck structures–including cranial nerves and common disorders affecting them; somatic sensory and motor innervation and related disorders; and an overview of brain stem structure

• Helps students clearly understand the unique characteristics of sensory and motor systems related to the head and neck

Detailed coverage of special functional systems–including sensory, motor, and cognitive functional systems, and systems involved with emotion, memory, and language

• Gives students deep insight into systems that are the subject of much of today’s most important neuroscientific research

Full section on key neurophysiological and neuroanatomical processes associated with injury and disease–including up-to-the-minute discussions of the impact of aging, traumatic brain injuries, and emerging evidence for brain plasticity

• Prepares students to understand important new scientific advances related to aging and brain injury

Full chapter of case examples–presenting the cases of real (not simulated) patients

• Gives students detailed insight into how neuroscientific concepts and theories link to actual patient cases