Gray Matter On My MInd: Brains Wired For Survival and Success Neuroscience for the Health Professions (GMOMM)

I’m writing from the perspective of a neuroscience teacher and researcher with a systems level approach rather than a molecular approach to nervous system concepts and principles. Furthermore, I’ve placed emphasis on information that may be most relevant to those who aspire to be, or are, healthcare professionals that choose rehabilitation as the entry point into patient care. I’ve included “classic” information as well as more recent discoveries that build on or challenge the “classics.” As an instructor, I find teaching neuroscience to be a wonderful challenge to make such information accessible to students at many levels of education: from undergraduate to graduate predoctoral, doctoral and professional doctoral students. I do not have a mathematical mind although I have great respect for those who understand nature “by the numbers.” I use what one might call a “mechanistic” approach. I’ve found most learners I have encountered can follow and use this approach as an analogy for often complex processes that are likely to be probabilistic (mathematically speaking) in their actual occurrence. Also you may notice I provide a sprinkling of humor in my writing much as I do in the classroom because an engaged brain retains a sense of humor even if it is not explicitly expressed for others to appreciate. Of course many topics related to nervous system dysfunction are deadly serious for the healthcare provider as well as for the patient and are treated as such. Many students find science to be “dry, abstract, intimidating, irrelevant, boring, esoteric, incomprehensible, etc.’ and neuroscience, in particular, to fit all those descriptions and worse. However, if the nervous system can be presented as a dynamic structural and functional entity, the learner will tend to be more engaged in and out of the classroom. That’s why I’ve included many movies and interactive media to make points about particular dynamic concepts or processes. I may not be the sharpest tack in the pack of neuroscientists but I do have a point that, pushed hard enough by inquisitive students, can attach a memo to their cerebral gray cork boards. Note: I know grey is a classic spelling of this color but as an anatomist I prefer gray. GMOMM does not tell you everything you need to know about neuroscience; such a book has yet to be written. I’ll never be able to provide a comprehensive picture at all levels of research in this enticing field of study. As a researcher I have moments of exhilaration in discovery but everyday I am humbled by the extraordinarily complex “simplicity” of nature