Principles of Neural Development

by Dale Purves, Jeff W. Lichtman

Book by Purves, Dale, Purves, Lichtman

Genres: Nonfiction

433 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Dale Purves (born March 11, 1938) is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1960 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964.

Reviews

[Reenie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing how something so insanely out of date can be so useful. Although I think I've probably been saying 'out of date' to all of the neuroscience textbooks I've been reading, this one is particularly striking. The nineties (and to a somewhat less dramatic extent, the last ten years) have been a time of massive changes and advances in the study of neural development, mostly due to the advances in molecular biology techniques that came into wide use over the period. Reading about the state of the field just prior to that explosion is rather surreal:

'the patterning of the retino-tectal pathway? But don't you KNOW that that's due to ephrin? How dumb are you? Didn't you pay attention in your intro undergrad classes? ... Ohh. Right. That was 1995 or thereabouts.'

Apart from the appreciation of how much progress has been made that you get from reading things like this, it's also useful to read them to see what we've lost with all the new things we know and the amazingly fancy shit we can do in our experiments now. In the absence of ways to generate large amounts of data and information about molecules, one is restricted to thinking (actually thinking!) about the underlying principles of what might be going on, and what the wider picture is. Yes, that can still happen today, but in all of science, it's so easy to get tied down into acquiring new information and avoiding tackling the tricky parts of trying to get all the confusing, occasionally [or often:] contradictory results into some sort of order that approaches understanding, rather than knowledge. Sometimes it's handy to step back and get that sense of perspective that comes from a complete absence of useful data.

Which reminds me of a favourite quote from New Zealand's most famous scientist:

“We haven't got the money, so we've got to think!”

(That would be Ernest Rutherford, if you didn't recognise it. Yes, he's definitely not British, even though he worked there... there is a limit to how much thinking you can do without an economy that will support research)

Alright... enough of the patriotic asides, although that does lead me into one of the other things I really enjoyed about this book - the chapters are peppered with mini-biographies of the big players in the experiments that are described. Alongside the general chronological details, Purves & Lichtman also try to describe the various ways that these giants in the field approached doing science, and point out just for every successful scientist, there is an individual way of doing science, often completely backwards to how the next guy is doing it. Another useful bit of perspective there for students and people beginning their careers, I think.

And finally, it's written in a style that's engaging, and sometimes highly amusing (yes, I laugh at quotes in science textbooks... but you probably already had realised just how nerdy I can be from previous reviews, so this shouldn't surprise you), so it helps it go by fast and easy. All in all, I'd say this is a must-read for everyone in neuroscience, and probably some people in related fields (or unrelated fields? Well... maybe not. But maybe) too.