Читать книгу Neurobiology For Dummies - Frank Amthor - Страница 9

In This Chapter

Getting to know the neuron

Finding out how the nervous system is organized

Feeling cerebral with thoughts, learning, and memory

Seeing the effects of mental illness and developmental problems

What makes you you? Your brain, most people would answer. Then what is it about your brain that makes you you? The brain is made of neurons. Worms have brains with neurons. So do dogs and monkeys. What about the brain distinguishes these animals from each other, and for that matter, one human from another? Is it more neurons, different neurons, special neural circuits?

Neurobiologists would like to answer all these questions, but they can’t yet. Thousands of them at universities all over the world are working on these problems. They have many hypotheses and data sets. This book, in a way, is a progress report on their efforts.

Virtually all neurobiologists believe that intelligence comes from nervous systems that are broadly programmed by genes and fine-tuned by experience. Generally, the human genetic program creates a brain with more neurons than any other animal, allowing for richer experience to produce a unique kind of intelligence.

This chapter gives an overview of the brain, its functions, and its parts. It also looks at why humans are like many other animals, such as primates, because of similarities in our brains, and what differences in the human brain may distinguish us from other species, and from each other.