THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, ITS FUNCTION AND ITS INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD

Lloyd Partridge and Donald Partridge, father and son, have between them nearly six decades of experience teaching neurophysiology to undergraduate, graduate, medical, dental, pharmacy, and physical therapy students. They have collaborated on this new text to provide a sound, innovative introduction to neurophysiology that can be used independently of the study of neuroanatomy.

The text has many useful features. Its organization by function frees students from having to become familiar with specific structures and thereby provides a better delineation of dynamic topics such as sensory encoding, feedback, adaptation, network interactions, and deterministic chaos. The specific identification of important concepts in each chapter aids instructors wishing to provide specialized examples to adapt a course to particular class needs. Open-ended questions and experiments, integrated into the text, foster greater insight into nervous system function than can be obtained solely by learning factual information. There are notes or solutions at the end of the text as well as an extensive glossary.

Anatomical localization is frequently repeated unnecessarily in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology courses. The Nervous System can be used as the only text for courses directed at students who either do not need to know neuroanatomical details or will learn localization in a separate neuroanatomy course. All the functional topics covered in traditional neurophysiology texts are included, while the dynamic role of the nervous system in dealing with changing internal and external conditions is emphasized.

Lloyd D. Partridge is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Tennessee. L. Donald Partridge is Associate Professor of Physiology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.