Vision Like hearing, vision depends on our being able to analyse vibrations: not of mechanical waves, but of electromagnetic ones. This implies an entirely different kind of transduction mechanism, and…

Motivation and the Control of Behaviour We first came across the concept of the hierarchical structure of the brain, its organization in an ascending series of levels, in Chapter 9….

Associational Cortex And Memory The processes we look at in this chapter are those that we humans tend to be inordinately proud of, and to which we owe any temporary…

Higher Motor Control Now we need to have a look at the levels of the motor system where we start to interpret and apply the detailed information delivered through the…

Local Motor Control The final output from the central nervous system to skeletal muscle is from the motor neurons in the ventral horn of the spinal cord or in the…

The Control of Posture Movement begins and ends in posture: for most of the time, the motor system is not concerned with moving the body at all, but rather with…

Smell and Tast All neurons in the brain respond to chemical transmitters, so chemosensitivity is hardly a specialization of function at all. Here we shall be considering only chemical stimuli…

Motor Systems Motor systems are intrinsically rather more complex than sensory ones, which is one reason why we know rather less about them. Where do these complexities come from? Why…

Hearing To hear is to feel the touch of vibration in the air, so that its transduction mechanisms are not so very different from those of the somatosensory system. But…