From Serendip

BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR INSTITUTE 2000

Tuesday morning, 11 July

The spaghetti box model of the nervous system: stimlus, response

But if brain=behavior:

• Harvard Law of Animal Behavior
• Different in different people, changes with time in same person

Looking at the real thing ("its boxes all the way down" - input neurons, output neurons, interneurons)

• Subdividing the vertebrate nervous system
  • Central vs peripheral
  • Telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon, rhombencephalon, spinal cord
  • Boxes within those boxes (eg thalamus, hypothalamus)
• Accounting embryologically for basic vertebrate central nervous system plan
  • long neural tube with rostral swelling, clearest in frog, folded/covered over by neocortex in mammals
• Variations in mammalian, vertebrate brains
  • "Sort of the same, sort of different"
  • Neocortex prominent in mammals, absent in frogs, fish

Boxes semi-autonomous

• Christopher Reeves
• The self and I-function

Some relevant web references, for Feb 1,3:

Divisions of the nervous system

Brain Development

Brain Variation

Comparative Neuroanatomy (mammalian)

Invertebrate Nervous Systems

Comparative Mammalian Brain Collections

The Whole Brain Atlas

Frog Brain

Neuroscience Tutorial

Leech Neurobiology Newsletter

Global Anatomy, includes neuroscience and histology units, resources

FlyBrain

Histology-Nervous Tissue

Types of Nerve Cells

Gallery of Neurons