I've already taken two neuroscience courses here at Macalester: The Enchanted Cortex--A Journey Through the Brain and Neuroanatomy. I loved both of them. The first day of The Enchanted Cortex--this was even before the rest of classes started my freshman year--each of us in the class got to see and hold a human brain. This was something I had wanted to do for quite a while (I had written about it in my "life goals" section of college applications), and when I finally got to, well, it was an eerie experience. To think that this three-pound chunk of bumpy gray flesh used to make someone unique; it held their hopes and aspirations, fears and anguish. You wonder who the person was, and wonder if those memories and feelings are still there somehow, "stored" as they were when the person was alive. In neuroanatomy we dealt with whole brains, half brains, and various slices of brains, so you didn't always think about those things anymore. But it is still kind of eerie to hold a brain, even after doing it a lot.
So, Behavioral Neuroscience/Physiological Psychology is my third neuroscience class. (Odd how the biology department names the course so that it seems more psychological in nature ("behavioral") and the psychology department names it so that it seems more biological ("physiological.")) So far I am enjoying it. As of now, we have only discussed the history, which is nice because I am not very familiar with very many events on the neurological time line. The next two chapters before our "quiz" are about basic neuron structure and the resting membrane potential, both things I know a little about, so that is nice also. I can't wait to get to the more functional aspect of things though. In neuroanatomy, we covered function at least briefly for all of the structures we were learning about, but the book was a neuroanatomy text, not a clinical or behavioral text, so it was poor in the functional respect. Our behavioral text seems good though. There are numerous good diagrams and pictures to help clarify things, and the text is informative but not confusing. I do have one complaint though. In the first chapter, the authors mention the "mind/brain" problem in the historical context, but basically claim that it is not a problem anymore. I don't think that things are that simple even today to totally gloss over that question. Yes, there is overwhelming evidence about neurotransmitters causing different feelings and such. However, it seems as though the authors don't have time to be bothered by something as trivial as the question of what exactly is the mind, and that seems wrong to me. To acknowledge what we do now know about neurotransmitters and feelings and personallity and memory and what-not, that is great, but to act as though no mind/brain problem could exist for any educated person these days, that is another matter entirely. Things like that should not be left entirely up to philosophers after all, people with knowledge of the brain need to be involved in that sort of discussion.