Not only do different people call different structures in the brain by different names, depending on which classificatory scheme they use and which species they mainly invesitgate, but also the different structures are all heirarchically organised so that any given structure is probably also part of several supa-structures and will contain a number of sub-structures.
Help is at hand.
This is a basic crib sheet for the basic terminology on prefixes, directional terminology, etc
BrainInfo is great for definitions of areas, showing where they are in the heirarchy, what else they are called and what else they contain.
And the Whole Brain Atlas is another great resource for orientating yourself.
4 replies on “neuroanatomical orientation”
Sex and Your Brain
Why doesn’t Viagra work for women? Today’s NYTimes reports on new research that points to ways that men and women’s brains differ when they become sexually aroused that may help explain this. Emory University’s Stephan Hamann and his research team…
Thanks, hugely useful. Have been looking for something like this for ages…..
I’ve also found these books really useful
J. Nolte (1999) “The Human Brain. An Introduction to Its Functional Anatomy,” 4th edition [i think it may be on 5th ed. now]
A.R. Crossman, D. Neary (2000) Neuroanatomy: An Illustrated Colour Text . Churchill Livingstone, ISBN: 0443062161
But they also say the ultimate and best way to orientate yourself is to see dissection…
So they say – I’ve tried twice this year to get on the free dissection courses at my uni but they’ve been full both times. Doing a PhD in psychology which involves neuropsychology, but not exclusively (lots of pure expt. psych) I’ve found it difficult to absorb the anatomical knowledge I ought to have, but have been getting away without. I figure steady and regular osmosis – checking where a cited Brodmanns area actually is, squinting a little harder at the CT scans in a single case study – is one method.
As for books, I’m still working my way through the ‘human brain colouring workbook’… 😉