IUBio

Neuroscience/Neuropsychology question

Richard Norman rsnorman at mediaone.net
Fri Jun 9 09:20:17 EST 2000


Don't worry about all this -- and getting a liberal arts degree
in no mistake!   Check out any major neurobiology text (like
Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell, Principles of Neural Science,
4th Ed, McGraw Hill, 2000) and try to find an equation in it, let
alone a derivative or integral.  (Yes, there are some equations,
but not very many!)

So you won't be a biophysicist, but for that you need a very different
training.  You are taking physics and PChem --with or without
calculus it still is useful.

But what I would really suggest for someone interested in the
physiology and cellular aspects of neurobiology is a very strong
biochemistry, and molecular/cell biology background.  That would
probably benefit you far more than more math.  For example,
at one time it was traditional to go through the Hodgkin-Huxley
equations, discussing the significance of the m,n, and h terms.
To understand that work, you really had to know at least a little
about differential equations. Now all that is completely bypassed
in favor of looking at the molecular structure of the gated ion
channels and finding motifs and homologies in the membrane-
spanning regions and gate controls.


Piaget's 2nd cousin <mollusks at happymollusks.com> wrote in message
news:3940975F.998FE8D1 at happymollusks.com...
> Thanks everyone......this is all useful information for me.
> I made the mistake of getting my undergrad degree from the College of
> Arts and Sciences (at Pitt, Bill!) and I didn't take any of the
> math/statistics/ research methods courses that, of course, I need now
> that I've found something I love to learn about (neuroscience).
>
> If anyone has any reading recommendations (about
> neuroscience/neuropsychology/..even a good calculus text) please post
> them!
>
> Thanks
>








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