Giovanni Bricconi

There is a nice book, available for free, if you are curious about how the nervous system works. Valerie Hedges has written it for undergraduate students, she is assistant professor at the Michigan State University. The book is available on the Open Textbook Library, in various formats: I just read it on-line chapter by chapter, but you can download a pdf.

It is very easy to read the book, no background knowledge is required. All the terms are introduced slowly, and there are a lot of pictures to illustrate the concepts. You will learn which kind of cells compose the brain, their different purposes. Neurons are described in theirs various parts, and you will learn about the ions that make the electrical communications possible. The ion pumps are described in a long chapter, and it is really amazing to see how complex is our nature. All our thoughts comes from an infinite set of small cells, receiving signals from many other cells but just producing a single output for the others that connects. Ions suddenly moves across the “skin” of these cells causing electrical communications, in a very ordinate way. All is based on generating impulses, at various frequencies, without consuming much energy.

I was curious to know how the connections between the neurons grows or shrinks (synaptic plasticity), unfortunately I did not find this in the book. Anyway I learned a lot, an the reading was really pleasant. Thank you Valery for having written and published this book for free, you did a great job.