Customer Reviews

Behavioral Neurobiology: An Integrative Approach (Psychology)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I took this course with Dr. Zupanc, and at first I thought this book went too much into detail with certain experiments. We focused a lot on certain studies -- so much so that I felt like the book was not comprehensively covering the subject. BUT after taking more courses that centered around brain-behavior relationships, the studies that Zupanc highlights in this book came together to form a larger picture. If you understand the material covered in this book, you should have a good foundation on concepts that will be covered in other courses.

So if you get past the heavy ethological point of view (it is a behavioral textbook after all), you'll be able to see and connect the ties to behavioral psychology and physiological psychology. This book leaves you wanting because it doesn't connect real world concepts for you. For this reason, I would take a cellular/developmental neurobiology course before learning systems neurobiology. For instance, I don't think Zupanc ever mentions V1 simple-complex cells, yet he spends a whole chapter on feature detectors. It would have been much more interesting for me if I had a better background before taking this course and reading this book... but that was the university's fault for not requiring that. ;) Overall, this is a good intro to behavioral neurobiology with excellent explanations of specific key findings in this area of study.

I recently took a upper level undergraduate bio class that had this book as it text book It is very much the mainstream text in this rather specialized area. There is quite a bit of information concerning the development of the area, too!