The hippocampus is a structure affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inflammation processes may be part of the early changes as part of AD. To understand inflammation we can look at neurometabolites.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe was a great book for introducing me, and for anyone,  into the realm of neurosurgery. Kristina Firlik takes us on a trip from her childhood, through her years of undergraduate, as a medical student

Sebastian Seung introduces brings us to the realization that we still have a lot to learn about the brain, because of its’ massive complexity. He also introduces us to C. elegans, a type of worm. The worm has 300 neurons, all of which have been mapped and given individual names.

Pineocytoma is a benign tumor found in the pineal gland, which is located in the middle of the brain, right below the choroid plexus, which is right bethe corpus callosum, pictured below. It is an uncommon small growing tumor of the pineal gland. 

This part of the book is an introduction into glial cells, their types, and their discovery. First, Dr. Douglas Fields starts off by talking about the discovery of Camillo Golgi and what led Santiago Ramon y Cajal to draw pictures of neurons the way he did. Camillo Golgi discovered a technique, by accident

This section of the book opened up with a story about King Henri VIII. King Henri VIII accrues a massive brain injury in a jousting incident against Nostradamus. The most interesting part to me were the two neurosurgeons we meet in this chapter, Ambroise Pare and Andreas Vesalius.

Moheb Costandi starts by suggesting that we have the ability to rewire our own brains. He asserts that the adult brain is not only capable of changing, but it does so continuously throughout life, in response to everything we do and every experience we have

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor takes us through a major event in her life that completely changed everything about her. She became a new, different woman. Before her stroke, Dr. Taylor was at the prime of her career and life. She was a neuroanatomist working