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I did not start with a career goal of becoming a neuroscientist, nor have I been a book lover in general, since my ADHD often kept me from finishing them. Somehow, while pursuing my growing passion for this field, I came across a few neuroscience books that strengthened my knowledge, broadened my view, and gave me company in the cold, dark Dutch winter. In today’s blog, I would like to share with you some of my favorites,and I also hope to hear back about the ones you enjoyed and your stories.
Neuroscience – Dale Purves
I personally like to call this book the Bible of neuroscience. When I started preparing my professional knowledge in neuroscience for the master’s program, I took an online course in Medical Neuroscience from Duke University. This book was the reference book for that course. It is an extensive book that covers the biological basics of the (mainly human) nervous system, with a clear structure and simple wording. The content of this book flows naturally, feeding you a large amount of knowledge without making the process dull or exhausting. The independence of each chapter also makes it work as a dictionary that I often visit back. I particularly like the appendix of atlases, with photographs and MRI images of the brain with anatomical terminologies: a feast for visual memorisers. I recommend it to all neuroscience and neurological students and people with a background in computer science, mathematics, physics, psychology, etc., but wanting to shift their focus to neuroscience.
The brain abstracted: simplification in the history and philosophy of neuroscience – Mazviita Chirimuuta
This is a recent book that focuses more on the philosophical aspect of neuroscience. As a researcher in systematic neuroscience, I love to think about the ultimate question, “How does our brain work?” from a perceptual and methodological perspective. This book helped me to dive into the motivations and limitations of the ways in which neuroscientists have been using to conceptualize and characterize our brain. It is not a thick book, but, as it gets more philosophical in the latter chapters, I sometimes found myself disoriented in the messages delivered. I recommend it particularly to senior students and early researchers in the field as an entertaining literature that also inspires critical and innovative thinking.
Introduction to Resting State FMRI Functional Connectivity – Janine Bijsterbosch
Different from the previous two, this book is much more specialized, systematically introducing the mechanisms and data analytical methods of this relatively new neuroimaging technology – resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). In my opinion, the word “new” does not mean the technique is novel, but rather that we still struggle to sufficiently extract useful biological information from existing high-dimensional imaging data. This book starts with how rs-fMRI is acquired regarding signal capturing and processing, to downstream analysis of how and why we handle the data. The “why” is important since we researchers risk getting indulged in countless fancy ways of analyzing our data, but little attention has been paid to asking why we perform a specific processing or analysis and what it means in terms of biological interpretation. I recommend this book to all stages of researchers who aim to use rs-fMRI in their studies or to have a systematic understanding of this interdisciplinary subfield in neuroscience.
Author: Xuanwei
Buddy and editor: Siddharth
Translator and editor translator: Lucas
Image: Peter Thomas
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