NROB60H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Long-Term Potentiation, Neurochemistry, Reductionism
Document Summary
Neuroscience is a very diverse and interdisciplinary field. Neuroscientists come from the medical, physics, neurochemistry, anthropologists, biology and computer science fields . The society of neuroscience was founded in 1970 by 1400 and now counts over 36000 scientists. We use animal models because their nervous systems are comparable to us. They have helped us a lot with long term potentiation for example. Some animals, such as owls have very goos auditory and visual systems, so if these systems are of interest, owls would be good candidates to study. We use the sheep brain in this course because it"s large, accessible, less costly and overlapping with the human brain. Different levels of analysis are used in a reductionist method (molecular, cellular, systems, behavioural and cognitive levels). At u of t there are 3 sets of reviews for animal studies. First, a detailed protocol is written submitted to the local animal care committee who give feedback.
