[.ca] Neuroscience (ISBN 0878936971)

Pointless Text:
Purves and his editors scored "big time" in this textbook. I find this text incredibly difficult to read. My prof constantly tell us of the mistakes she finds in the textbook. The diagrams are great, but some of them contain mistakes, too. We only studied about seven chapters of the textbook. The textbook didn't help my understanding of the many concepts in neuroscience. Sure, everything is great when you read things for fun... But you would thnk that if they design this as a textbook, they would correct any mistakes before putting it in large scale publication.

Excellent! Accessible, great graphics, good organization.:
As an undergraduate Psychobiology student, this text served me well in my Neuroscience course. In all honesty I never went. I just read this book. I got excellent marks in the class. As a serious slacker and bibliophile, I recommend this textbook for any like-minded student.

Excellent for Undergrads:
As an undergraduate Neuroscience major I found this textbook to be highly informative and well-written. It was used to a Freshman-level course, and was easy to understand, yet thorough and interesting. The graphics are well done, and the format is better than most textbooks I'm used to. Anyone, even with minimal science experience could dive right in and learn a great deal. It may not be advanced enough, however, for grad or medical students. As a reference it does okay, but there are more-advanced texts which would probably do better. All-in-all it is an excellent book. In-fact, I liked it so much that I didn't sell it back at the end of the semester and keep it on my bookshelf for future reference (and future classes!)

Confusing:
When I saw the page I recognized the cover of the book, but I could not believe what people were actually writing about it. First I want to say that I am an undergraduate biotechnology student. I have a very strong background in biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, tissue culture techniques, and immunology; but I have not had any classes dealing with anatomy or physiology since Bio 101 way back when. I have read and am quite comfortable with Alberts Molecular Biology of the Cell and Stryers Biochemistry, and even a handful of primary journal articles, so I do know how to read a textbook. Now with that out of the way, let me say that this book is completely incomprehensible. It is so full of anatomy and Latin derived words (which it does a poor job at explaining BTW) that I can only assume that it was meant for medical students, and to have physiology an a prerequisite for it, but it doesn't even have an introduction describing the recommended background or whom it is supposed to be for. In fact, most of the book is devoted to the physiology of sensation and movement, not neurobiology. Now if you have the background for it and thats what you are looking for then it is a very thorough text that goes into a lot of depth. If you are looking to understand the biochemistry or molecular aspects of neurobiology, find another book!

An excellent neuroscience text:
While taking neurobiology as a graduate student I used this text to supplement Principles of Neural Science. While I read Principles and enjoyed it, I used Neuroscience to study for course exams and my departmental preliminary examination. The writing is clear, concise, and very to the point. Unlike Principles, experimental studies underlying the facts are not described in as much detail in Neuroscience (this presentation of information is better when you want to get to the core of what you need to know). While many new texts like to go into heavy detail about new drug and genetic manipulations for neurological and psychological disorders, speculations in Neuroscience about such "up to the minute" information is kept to a minimum. The messages of the wonderful color illustrations accompanying the text are easy to grasp (they serve their purpose very well). An excellent upper level undergraduate or graduate level neuroscience text. Very good for a concise review of the information.