The Brain

The leading team of cartographers of the brain and legendary authors of the Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates have now for the first time pooled 30 years of knowledge and experience in publishing neuroanatomical atlases to provide an introductory text covering neuroanatomical and brain atlasing techniques. The text introduces neuroanatomy by comparing features of the rat brain to the human. This is a unique and invaluable approach - model systems are increasingly used for research in Neuroscience and adjacent disciplines, but relating findings to the human is a notorious problem. This groundbreaking text will introduce students to key techniques and teach them how to study and analyse the neuroanatomy of model systems and successfully relate their findings back to the human brain.

Via the rat brain example, the text first introduces students to major anatomical features of the mammalian brain, and then prepares them for examination of the main functional components - motor and sensory systems, centres associated with memory, cognition, goal oriented behaviours, and emotional expression. This basic knowledge of neuroanatomy is then consolidated with a tour of a mini-atlas of the brain. This section introduces students to the use of a brain atlas and provides a convenient link to the Paxinos and Watson atlas, thus providing a significant advantage to students who go on to undertake their own research projects in neuroscience. The final section presents the distinctive features of the human brain from an anatomical and functional point of view, followed by discussion of the effects of common types of injury and illness on the human brain. A special section on mental illness and the brain will give students an appreciation of modern findings on the basis of mental illness.

• Appendices on the development of the brain and techniques for studying the structure and function of the brain
• Each section is supplemented with exercises to consolidate the material studied.
• Numerous figures clearly illustrating the points made in the text
• Colour pictures of brain sections
• Mini-atlas of the mammalian brain outlining the main areas
• Based on the new unified mammalian nomenclature as devised by Paxinos, Watson, and Puelles, thus compatible with all atlases from the Paxinos team, and BrainNavigator