Customer Reviews

A Colorful Introduction to the Anatomy of the Human Brain: A Brain and Psychology Coloring Book

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I teach an interdisciplinary course in psychology and neuroscience, and my psych students have found this book helpful for getting up to speed on neuroanatomy. I've also started using some of the pages as overheads during my lectures, since the diagrams are uncluttered and easy to draw on.

I'm writing a review because I thought I should mention that I found this book *much* more useful than its better-known competitor. The other book has more fine-grained anatomical detail, of the sort that would be most useful to someone studying to be a neurosurgeon - but the result is that it's very hard for a casual student to tell what's worth studying or remembering. This book does a much better job of focusing on the important structures, the ones that you're likely to see mentioned in popular science books and articles. The second half (Functional Neuroanatomy, with chapters devoted to the systems subserving different functions) is especially useful.

For anyone interested in self-study, or who just wants a quick reference source for neural structures that they see mentioned in other texts, I'd strongly recommend this book.

--I am a medical professional who has not had a formal neuroanatomy course for some time. I've "returned" to neuroanatomy because brain science is so interesting, and because I now need to know it more and more for professional reasons.
--This book is grrreat for its intended purpose -- providing an accurate and reasonably entertaining BASIC introduction (or re-introduction) to functional neuroanatomy (and a good foundation is both rare and valuable). Without neuroanatomy, you are soon in the realm of "sophistry and delusion" while reading about extremely exciting recent brain research. This book seems to be a reasonably adequate BASIC text and is a good "piggyback" for further work. It isn't intended to bog you down, and will probably provide most of the neuroanatomy you need to know to read a book by Edelman, D'Amasio, Ledoux, etc. more productively and enjoyably.
--If you've never had a neuroanatomy course, breaking out the Crayola colored pencils is a good way to learn. If you have had a neuroanatomy class in the distant past, you can clear the cobwebs pretty quickly with this text. It's much less daunting than related texts, and you can always get to those later.

I'm a psychology major, and although I enjoy and do well with all other aspects of psychology, I had despaired of ever learning all of the brain structure and functions stuff. I finally bought this book as part of one last attempt to learn about the brain before I had to take the psych GRE subject test, and I found it to be amazingly helpful. For one thing, you get to color! That made it immediately much more appealing than my other study aids, which meant that I actually used it. In fact, I sometimes spent much more time on it than I meant to, because it is just such an interesting and fun book. It breaks the information down into small packages that are easy to learn, and moves through the material in a logical sequence. Each lesson consists of a few paragraphs describing about 3-5 structures, a column with a definition/brief description of each structure, and then a picture showing all 3-5 structures so that you can color each a different color, and see how they fit together. There are reviews and quizzes at the end of every chapter so that you can check that you've learned the material. Despite my previous cluelessness about brain structures, I found that I consistently got all the quiz questions right after working through the lessons. I would definitely recommend this book to any psych students who feel like they need to brush up on the brain, or to anyone else who is interested in learning about the brain. It's clear, easy to read, and fun!

Ever wonder why people, possibly yourself, perform the mundane to outlandish acts we witness? Ever curious to delve past surface psycho-babble and actually learn about human brain anatomy? Too deep? Not in this enjoyable reviewing workbook.

One of the main reasons I keep returning to this educational tool, is the inclusion of exercise quizzes at the completion of each chapter. In fact, because it deals with only major concepts, progresses in small, logical, easy-to-learn increments, this book is practical for non-experts, students, and professionals alike.

I majored in Psychology. However, those years are "tailights" now. Therefore, I recently found myself drawn to Chapter-10 "Brain Structures and Memory". Thankfully, the authors included answers for chapter quizzes.

This is a breezy and fun book. You actually get to "color"! A great gift and addition to medical reference collections.

Thank you for your interest & comments--CDS

Love the book.
Up untill now, I've had "mosaic" type introduction to the brain.
I never got to see the overall/interrelated and simple basics.
The professional editors mention the phrase: "compared to the competition, this book"....
I bought one of the "competitors".
The virtues of the "other" book were the encyclopedic (thus, informative) detail, and the endurance that one could gain, by putting in 4 to 5 times as much effort into each page.
The Pinel/Edwards book is its complement: rightly described via "Less is more.". By editing out detail and the use of 3D illustrations where ever possible [vs 2D sections], confidence is built, based on knowledge & familiarity.
The philosophy of: review, review & re-review does make for retention. And the overall simplicity of the book keeps the effort invested into learning from being onerous.

If you loved your third grade art class, you'll love this brain coloring book. The truth is we learn by doing, using our hands, applying colors. Many areas of the brain are involved in what we think of as simple learning tasks. Adding manual tasks to learning the complicated anatomy of the brain strengthens the learning process - forces you to linger over the page and get involved in learning the structures.

I feel the text on each facing page is quite useful but could have been a little more detailed on the clinical end. You will come out of the 'coloring book' experience with far greater confidence in your understanding of neuroanatomy than you expected. You may find reading on neuropsychology a good deal easier, now that you have, in effect, overstudied the anatomy and physiiology underlying it.

For those who want to go beyond this text to a really superior text in this subject, I highly recommend Clinical Neuroanatomy by FitzGerald and Fokan-Curran published by W. B. Saunders. It is already marvelously colored and illustrated with much greater detail and clinical information. It is an exceptional medical text (and priced accordingly). The medical illustration, scans, photos and other teaching aids are excellent and profuse. The coloring book is just a sort of 'boot camp' to prepare you for this. I have not seen a better text on neuroanatomy. If you are seriously in need of learning or reviewing your knowledge of this subject, this is the one.

ADDENDA: I have just read Pinel's other excellent work called BIOPSYCHOLOGY. Illustrated by his partner (sic) Maggie - superbly and contributing greatly to the success of the book as a great teaching medium in neuropsychology and neurology. It is a textbook for undergraduates in Psychology and assumes little in previous physiology and anatomy, using extensive explanations of vocabulary and concepts. Frankly, you might as well buy this one instead of the coloring book. It will cost more but you will get a lot more out of it along with the same high quality of illustrations necessary to understand this challenging subject. John Pinel has an engaging writing style, some surprising personal anecdotes, and many case histories. I highly recomment BIOPSYCHOLOGY.

I bought this book to help me with my cognitive neuroscience class, and it proved to be very useful. I think it'd work best for those who are visual learners. Rather than looking at a diagram in a book and memorizing it, I was spending a few minutes on certain sections of the brain to color them in, which made the parts (and functions, which I kept reviewing while coloring) stick in my mind.

I am not one who is able to just memorize parts of the brain and learn it completely through class lectures. This basic book helps me, a graduate student, learn the important parts and their functions visually with the use of pictures. I do not plan on coloring in the parts but it is nice to know that I can if I wanted. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone taking Neuroanatomy-pictures are definitely a better way to learn.

This was a great tool to use while studying neuro. I would buy it again, and would tell my friends to do the same. It was very helpful, and gave detailed pictures that I couldn't find anywhere else, even on the internet.

I am interested in neuroanatomy and needed a tool to help me learn. This book has great stories about the brain to accompany the coloring pages and the information is organized in a very helpful way. I would highly recommend this book.