Customer Reviews

Physiology of Behavior

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

 

 

I would like to find Neil Carlson and shake his hand. This is is without a doubt one of the best textbooks I've had the pleasure of using.

I'm in my senior year of studying cognitive sciences and so far I've had two courses that used this book. When studying for exams in those course I simply read the relevant chapters. The material is concise, well-organized, summarized just when you need it to be summarized, pockmarked with occasional interesting tidbits and stories, just to keep you interested. Every once in a while there's a small terminology box to refresh your memory on the terms you've just encountered.

Simply put, it's a book that makes studying the (rather complex, actually) subject of physiology of behaviour easy.

If you need this book for a course, I heartily recommend you buy it instead of just borrowing from friends. I'm not sure why you would want to buy such a book for non-academic purposes and just to read it for the hell of it - but if you do - it's a book that supplies a lot of information in a very easy to digest manner.

Two thumbs up. Good job Dr/Prof/Mr/Whatever Carlson...

I have used this text for over 4 years now and have nothing but praises for the manner in which it is written. It covers very difficult material in a reader-friendly manner without downplaying the importance of its contents. As with all texts, while there are some inaccuracies, these do not detract from the overall excellence of the text. In fact, they reflect the vibrant, rapidly changing nature of the field. As Torsten Wiesel said recently, 90% of what we know about the brain has been discovered within this decade, the Decade of the Brain.

This review applies to the 6th edition, which I bought as required reading for my undergraduate Physiological Psychology course. Now, in graduate school, I often refer to this text. The CD-ROM that came with the book has been invaluable as a "refresher" in basic neuroanatomy. The book is written in an easy-to-understand manner. I give it four stars instead of five only because I wish that the authors went into more detail about certain key topics, such as neurotransmitters and brain structures.

I am an undergraduate neuroscience major at Univeristy of Massachustts, Amherst, and I had the author of this book , Dr Neil Carlson, as my professor for both the undergrad and grad level of this course. I am now a TA for the course, so I know the book pretty well. It is written in exactly the same style as he lectures. This probably because the book was originally developed from notes he used to hand out, which you can tell when reading the book. He has little personal comments inserted in paragraphs; he writes in the first person; he has strange analogies; he sometimes jumps from subject to subject; but overall, the book is quite good. The best things about the book are the diagrams and the cd. They very clearly illustrate exactly what he's discussing, and make the subject at hand easier for students to understand. As for the breadth of the material covered, it seems to be quite wide. He starts off with the basics, like neuron structure and brain anatomy, but then quickly moves on from there to sleep mechanisms, eating behavior, learning and memory, etc. The concentration of the book is on the effects of hormones on the brain and our behaviors resulting from those effects. I would recommend taking some introductory biology courses before trying to tackle the book; my psych major friend who hasn't had a tougher time with the class. Overall though, the book is not that hard to understand. I've learned a lot from it and not been bored while doing it. It's one of the most popular textbooks for the physiology of behavior out there. My book is dogearred from so much use, and though I have used it for 3 semesters, I still feel like I can glean more information from it!

Great book for undergraduate students willing to get to understand the way the nervuos systems works and influences all other systems of the body. Very complete explanations are given about the way visual, auditive and reproductive systems work and get related with outcoming stimuli.

Being forced to read a textbook at school is one thing, but being asked to read about the brain and its cognitive functions is other. For any one fascinated with the brain, this physiological rollercoaster into the mind is very intense and very in depth. ( At times it may be hard to follow because of the amount of concentration needed to go along with its terminologies). Not recommended as a reference book. It is definately more of a textbook for any medical-school-oriented individual>>>

This was my textbook for Behavioral Neuroscience (Pysch 390 I think) at UMass Amherst. It can get kind of verbose, but its immense detail more than makes up for it. I still use it for a reference source. I think it's also worth noting that Barron's GRE Psychology prep book recommends this book.

I got an A in the class, and the science side of psychology is really not my thing at all.

It's a good book, you should get it :)

This is a good introductory book for psychology students with little or no background in physics, chemistry, and biology. The author does a good job in explaining difficult concepts in simple layman's terms. I do wish however that he would expand a little bit more on neural development.

Folks with a good background in neuroscience should consider using Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell's Principles of Neural Science instead.

Although at times a pretty good introductory text, Physiology of Behavior is often incorrect or too vague to be of use. Text is often written quite informally and in the first person. Maybe good for really advanced high-school psychology classes. Overall - weak.

the book came in a reasonable amount of time but was not the same quality as was initially stated. It said the book was brand new but it had bent corners.