Foundations of Neural Development

Published by Sinauer Associates, an imprint of Oxford University Press.

Foundations of Neural Development is a textbook written with a conversational writing style and topics appropriate for an undergraduate audience. Each chapter begins with a thought-provoking vignette, or a "real-life story," that the subsequent material illuminates. The "Researchers at Work" feature, available in every chapter, describes a classic study in detail, taking the reader through the hypothesis, test, result, and conclusion of an experiment. A marginal glossary, review questions, and bulleted summary are a few of the other features in the book. Chapters 1-7 unfold in the order of ontogeny, covering induction, the establishment of a body plan, neural migration, differentiation, axonal pathfinding, synapse formation, and apoptosis. Chapters 8-10 address activity-guided, experience-guided, and socially guided neural development--mechanisms that were crucial for the evolution of the human brain. Lively and engaging, with the finest illustrations, Foundations of Neural Development is the perfect book to help any undergraduate student understand how a single microscopic cell, a human zygote, can develop into the most complex machine on earth, the brain.