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The learning path

All 183 entries, arranged from Beginner to Advanced. Start at the top, in any topic that grabs you. Every article tells you which concepts to read first, so you can always step back down a rung.

STEP 1

Beginner 83

Beginner

No background needed. Everyday language, everyday examples — the place to start.

83 entries

Neuroscience Foundations Beginner What Is Neuroscience? Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system — the brain, spinal cord and nerves — and of how its cells and circuits produce everything from a heartbeat to a memory. October 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Neuroscience Foundations Beginner The Branches of Neuroscience From molecules to minds: a map of the sub-fields of neuroscience — molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive, computational, clinical and more — and what each one actually studies. July 16, 2026 · 2 min read

Neuroscience Foundations Beginner The Nervous System at a Glance The body's wiring in one page: the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), the peripheral nervous system, and its somatic and autonomic divisions. May 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Neuroscience Foundations Beginner The Brain by the Numbers About 86 billion neurons, roughly as many glial cells, around 1.4 kilograms, and a fifth of the body's energy: the headline statistics of the human brain — and where the numbers come from. January 6, 2026 · 3 min read

Neuroscience Foundations Beginner Brain Myths, Debunked No, you don't use only 10% of your brain — and you aren't 'left-brained' or 'right-brained' either. A tour of the most popular brain myths and what the science actually says. December 14, 2025 · 3 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Ancient Egypt and the Edwin Smith Papyrus The oldest known written description of the brain comes from an Egyptian surgical text copied around 1600 BCE — a practical trauma manual that noticed head injuries could paralyse the body. August 31, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Greek and Roman Ideas About the Brain Alcmaeon put the mind in the head, Hippocrates called epilepsy a brain disorder, Aristotle bet on the heart, Alexandrian anatomists traced the nerves, and Galen proved it with pigs. March 15, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Medieval and Islamic Brain Science From the 'cell doctrine' that housed imagination, reason and memory in the brain's ventricles to Ibn al-Haytham's optics and Ibn Sina's medicine — how ideas about the brain were preserved and extended between antiquity and the Renaissance. May 7, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Vesalius, Willis and the Renaissance Brain Andreas Vesalius corrected Galen by looking for himself; Thomas Willis turned attention from the ventricles to the brain tissue itself and coined the word 'neurology'. August 27, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Galvani and Animal Electricity Twitching frog legs in 18th-century Bologna revealed that nerves and muscles run on electricity — sparking a feud that gave us the battery and, eventually, the action potential. December 2, 2025 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Phrenology and the Localization Debate Bumps on the skull, ablated pigeons and electrified dog brains: how the 19th century argued over whether different parts of the brain do different jobs. November 30, 2025 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Broca, Wernicke and the Language Areas A patient who could only say 'tan', and another who spoke fluently but made no sense: how two 19th-century neurologists discovered that language lives largely in the left hemisphere. May 17, 2026 · 3 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Phineas Gage In 1848 an iron rod blasted through a railway foreman's head. He survived — but 'was no longer Gage'. The most famous case in neuroscience, and how its story grew in the telling. January 7, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner Patient H.M. and the Science of Memory Henry Molaison lost the ability to form new memories after brain surgery in 1953 — and over five decades of testing taught science that memory is not one thing and depends on the hippocampus. January 27, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Beginner The Birth of Modern Neuroscience From the founding of the Society for Neuroscience in 1969 through the 'Decade of the Brain', brain imaging, genetics and the BRAIN Initiative: how neuroscience became one of science's biggest fields. July 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Santiago Ramón y Cajal The would-be artist from rural Spain who became the father of modern neuroscience — proving that the brain is made of separate cells and drawing them with unmatched beauty. February 9, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Camillo Golgi The Italian physician whose 'black reaction' stain made individual neurons visible for the first time — and who, ironically, used it to defend the wrong theory. December 12, 2025 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Wilder Penfield The neurosurgeon who mapped the human cortex in awake patients, gave us the 'homunculus', and built the Montreal Neurological Institute. February 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Brenda Milner The founder of neuropsychology whose patient studies — above all of Henry Molaison — showed that memory comes in different kinds handled by different parts of the brain. August 5, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Rita Levi-Montalcini Barred from her university by fascist racial laws, she built a lab in her bedroom — and went on to discover nerve growth factor and win the Nobel Prize. May 15, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Oliver Sacks and the Art of the Case Study The neurologist-writer whose books — Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat — brought the inner lives of patients with neurological conditions to millions of readers. June 26, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Beginner Nobel Prizes in Neuroscience: A Timeline From Golgi and Cajal in 1906 to the receptors for heat and touch in 2021 — the Nobel Prizes that mark the major discoveries about the nervous system. June 16, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Beginner The Neuron The nerve cell is the basic signalling unit of the nervous system: dendrites gather inputs, the cell body integrates them, and the axon sends an electrical pulse to other cells. November 6, 2025 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Beginner Types of Neurons Sensory neurons, motor neurons and interneurons; pyramidal cells, Purkinje cells and granule cells — how neurons are classified by job, by shape and by the genes they use. April 26, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Beginner Glial Cells: The Other Half of the Brain Long dismissed as 'glue', glial cells — astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, Schwann cells, microglia and ependymal cells — insulate, feed, clean, defend and even help shape communication between neurons. January 28, 2026 · 2 min read

Neural Signaling Beginner How Neurons Communicate: The Big Picture Electrical inside the cell, chemical between cells: a one-page overview of how a neuron receives, decides, fires and passes on a message. August 1, 2026 · 2 min read

Neural Signaling Beginner The Synapse The junction where one neuron passes its message to another: the presynaptic terminal, the 20-nanometre cleft, neurotransmitter release and the receptors waiting on the other side. November 25, 2025 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Beginner Neurotransmitters: An Overview The brain's chemical messengers at a glance — amino acids, monoamines, acetylcholine, peptides and gases — what makes something a neurotransmitter, and what the major ones do. November 2, 2025 · 3 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Beginner Dopamine Not simply the 'pleasure chemical': dopamine drives movement, motivation and learning from surprises. Its pathways, the reward-prediction-error discovery, and its role in Parkinson's disease, addiction and schizophrenia. January 19, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Beginner Serotonin From the gut to the raphe nuclei: serotonin's many receptors and roles — in mood, sleep, appetite, impulse control and perception — and why the 'chemical imbalance' story of depression is too simple. June 12, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner A Tour of the Brain A guided walk from the bottom of the brain to the top: brainstem, cerebellum, the deep structures of the forebrain, and the folded cerebral cortex — with what each part is best known for. September 19, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner The Cerebral Cortex The brain's wrinkled outer sheet: its folds, its six layers, its lobes and Brodmann areas, and how sensory, motor and association regions divide the work. December 16, 2025 · 3 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner The Frontal Lobe The largest lobe: motor control, speech production, planning, self-control and personality — from the primary motor strip to the prefrontal cortex. November 21, 2025 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner The Parietal Lobe Touch, body sense, space and number: the parietal lobe builds your sense of where your body is and where things are around you — and its damage can make half the world disappear. January 9, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner The Temporal Lobe Hearing, language comprehension, recognising faces and objects, and — on its inner surface — memory and emotion: the many jobs of the temporal lobe. May 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner The Occipital Lobe The brain's visual centre at the back of the head: primary visual cortex, the maps of the visual field, the 'what' and 'where' streams, and what happens when it is damaged. January 11, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Beginner Left Brain, Right Brain and the Corpus Callosum What the split-brain experiments really showed, which functions are lateralised, and why the 'left-brained versus right-brained' personality idea is a myth. August 25, 2026 · 3 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Beginner The Spinal Cord The information highway between brain and body — and a processor in its own right, handling reflexes and rhythmic patterns like walking. Its structure, its nerves and what happens when it is injured. November 17, 2025 · 2 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Beginner The Peripheral Nervous System All the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord: how a nerve is built, sensory and motor fibres, fast and slow fibres, how nerves regrow — and common problems like carpal tunnel and neuropathy. May 3, 2026 · 2 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Beginner The Autonomic Nervous System Fight or flight versus rest and digest: the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems that run your heart, lungs, gut, pupils and sweat glands without asking — and the vagus nerve at its heart. November 8, 2025 · 2 min read

Development & Plasticity Beginner How the Brain Builds Itself From a flat sheet of cells to 86 billion neurons: the neural tube, the burst of neuron production before birth, migration, wiring, pruning and myelination — the timeline of brain development. February 24, 2026 · 3 min read

Development & Plasticity Beginner The Teenage Brain Adolescence is a major period of brain remodelling: pruning, myelination, a reward system that matures early and a prefrontal cortex that matures late. What that does — and doesn't — explain about teenage behaviour. December 23, 2025 · 3 min read

Development & Plasticity Beginner Neuroplasticity: The Changeable Brain Your brain rewires itself with every experience. Synaptic plasticity, structural change, London taxi drivers, phantom limbs and recovery after stroke — the evidence that the adult brain keeps changing. March 7, 2026 · 3 min read

Development & Plasticity Beginner The Aging Brain What normally changes as we age — slower processing, word-finding pauses, a shrinking brain — what doesn't, the difference between ageing and dementia, and the idea of cognitive reserve. May 30, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Beginner How the Senses Work Every sense follows the same basic recipe: specialised receptor cells convert energy into electrical signals, which travel along dedicated pathways to the brain — where perception is constructed, not simply received. April 30, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Beginner Touch and the Somatosensory System Four kinds of touch receptor, the Piezo2 channel behind the 2021 Nobel Prize, the pathways to the brain and the sensory homunculus — how skin becomes a sense. April 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Beginner Smell and Taste Hundreds of odour receptor types, the direct road from nose to emotion and memory, five basic tastes, the debunked tongue map — and why flavour is mostly smell. September 17, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Beginner Perception and Illusions What illusions reveal about how the brain constructs reality: top-down expectations, the Müller-Lyer lines, the Ames room, change blindness, the invisible gorilla and the McGurk effect. April 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Movement & Motor Control Beginner How the Brain Moves the Body From intention to action: the motor hierarchy of cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum, brainstem, spinal cord and motor neurons — and the difference between upper and lower motor neuron damage. February 26, 2026 · 2 min read

Movement & Motor Control Beginner Reflexes The knee jerk, pulling back from a flame, a baby's grasp: fast, automatic responses wired into the spinal cord and brainstem — how they work and why doctors test them. February 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Beginner Types of Memory Sensory, working and long-term memory; episodic, semantic and procedural; explicit and implicit — a map of memory systems and the brain regions behind each. May 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Beginner Forgetting and False Memories Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, why spacing beats cramming, how leading questions rewrite memories, and Elizabeth Loftus's 'lost in the mall' — why confident memories can be wrong. June 8, 2026 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Beginner How the Brain Makes Emotions James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, two-factor, basic emotion circuits and constructed emotion: a century of theories about where feelings come from, and what brain research says now. September 29, 2026 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Beginner The Reward System Rats pressing levers thousands of times, wanting versus liking, and dopamine's role in motivation: how the brain's reward circuitry drives us — and how drugs, food and screens can hijack it. December 29, 2025 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Beginner Stress and the Brain The stress response from Selye to the HPA axis, why short-term stress helps and chronic stress harms, effects on memory and the hippocampus, and evidence-based ways to manage stress. June 28, 2026 · 2 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Beginner Love and Bonding Prairie voles, oxytocin and vasopressin, the reward circuitry of romantic love, parental bonding and heartbreak: what neuroscience has learned about attachment — and where the 'love hormone' story goes too far. January 25, 2026 · 2 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Beginner The Stages of Sleep Light sleep, deep slow-wave sleep and REM sleep: what happens in the brain during each stage, how they cycle through the night, and how sleep changes across life. August 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Beginner Why We Sleep Memory consolidation, synaptic rebalancing, waste clearance, energy and repair: the leading theories of why every animal studied sleeps — and what happens when we don't get enough. February 16, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Beginner Dreams What dreams are, when they happen, why they're so strange, theories from Freud to activation-synthesis and threat simulation, lucid dreaming, and what brain scans of dreamers reveal. March 2, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Beginner Circadian Rhythms: The Body Clock The suprachiasmatic nucleus, clock genes and the 2017 Nobel Prize, light-sensing ganglion cells, melatonin, jet lag, shift work and why some people are larks and others owls. November 29, 2025 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Alzheimer's Disease The most common cause of dementia: Alois Alzheimer's 1906 case, amyloid plaques and tau tangles, symptoms and stages, risk factors, diagnosis with scans and blood tests, and the first drugs that modestly slow it. July 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Parkinson's Disease James Parkinson's 'shaking palsy', the loss of dopamine neurons, alpha-synuclein and Lewy bodies, motor and non-motor symptoms, and treatments from L-dopa to deep brain stimulation. September 27, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Stroke What happens when blood supply to the brain fails, how to recognise a stroke fast (BE-FAST), why 'time is brain', clot-busting drugs and clot retrieval, recovery and prevention. November 15, 2025 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Epilepsy One of the oldest known brain conditions: what a seizure is, the many types, causes, diagnosis with EEG, treatments from medication to surgery and diet — and what to do if you see someone having a seizure. August 12, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Migraine and Headache Far more than a bad headache: migraine's phases and aura, the trigeminal system and CGRP, the new generation of targeted treatments, other headache types, and the warning signs that need urgent care. September 2, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Beginner Concussion, Brain Injury and CTE From mild concussion to severe traumatic brain injury: what happens when the brain is jolted, why rest and gradual return matter, and the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in athletes. February 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Beginner The Brain and Mental Illness What neuroscience can and can't yet say about mental disorders: the biopsychosocial model, why there's no brain scan for depression, DSM and ICD, the RDoC framework, and how genes and environment interact. August 29, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Beginner Depression One of the world's leading causes of disability: symptoms, what's happening in the brain (beyond 'low serotonin'), stress and inflammation, and treatments from talking therapy and medication to ketamine and brain stimulation. April 14, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Beginner Anxiety Disorders The world's most common mental disorders: generalised anxiety, panic, phobias and social anxiety; what over-active threat circuits look like; and why exposure-based therapy works so well. April 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Beginner Autism A neurodevelopmental difference in social communication, sensory experience and patterns of interest: history from Kanner and Asperger, prevalence, genetics, the debunked vaccine myth, brain research and neurodiversity. June 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Beginner ADHD Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: the three presentations, what brain research shows about attention and reward, why it often continues into adulthood, common myths, and how stimulant medication and other treatments help. July 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Tools & Methods Beginner How We Study the Brain: An Overview of Methods From patients and post-mortem slices to scanners, electrodes, light-controlled neurons and supercomputers: the toolkit of neuroscience and the trade-offs between seeing where, seeing when and seeing causes. May 21, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Beginner Lesion Studies: Learning from Brain Damage How studying people with brain injuries — Leborgne, Gage, H.M. and thousands since — revealed what brain regions do, the logic of double dissociation, modern lesion-mapping, and the method's pitfalls. July 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Beginner The Brain vs. Artificial Neural Networks How brain science inspired AI — from the perceptron to deep learning — and how today's artificial neural networks are both similar to and very different from real brains. April 18, 2026 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Beginner Brain-Computer Interfaces Devices that read brain signals to control computers, robotic arms and synthetic voices: BrainGate, speech neuroprostheses, Neuralink and Synchron, non-invasive BCIs, and the ethical questions they raise. July 9, 2026 · 3 min read

Treatments & Therapies Beginner Neurosurgery: From Trepanation to Robots Holes drilled in prehistoric skulls, Harvey Cushing's revolution, the dark chapter of lobotomy, awake brain surgery, Gamma Knife radiosurgery and focused ultrasound — a history of operating on the nervous system. July 28, 2026 · 3 min read

Treatments & Therapies Beginner Neurorehabilitation Recovering after stroke, brain injury and spinal cord injury: how rehabilitation harnesses plasticity, constraint-induced therapy, mirror therapy, speech therapy, robotics, vagus nerve stimulation and spinal stimulation that helped paralysed people walk. November 27, 2025 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner Caffeine, Alcohol, Nicotine and the Brain What the world's most common psychoactive substances actually do: caffeine blocking adenosine, alcohol boosting GABA and silencing memory, nicotine hijacking acetylcholine — plus tolerance, sleep and long-term effects. June 7, 2026 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner Exercise, Diet, Sleep and Brain Health What the evidence says about keeping your brain healthy: aerobic exercise and BDNF, the MIND and Mediterranean diets, sleep, social connection, hearing and blood pressure — and why most 'brain training' apps disappoint. December 4, 2025 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner Neuromyths in Education Learning styles, left- and right-brain learners, Brain Gym, the Mozart effect and 'critical windows' for everything: how brain myths spread into classrooms, and what learning science actually supports. September 13, 2026 · 2 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner The Big Brain Projects The US BRAIN Initiative, the EU Human Brain Project, China and Japan's brain programmes, the Allen Institute, the Human Connectome Project and the 2023 human brain cell atlas: neuroscience as big science. July 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner Careers in Neuroscience Neuroscientist, neurologist, neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, neuropsychologist, neuroengineer, data scientist, science writer: the many paths into brain science, what they involve and how to get started. October 6, 2026 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Beginner The Future of Neuroscience The biggest open questions — how memories are stored, how consciousness arises, how to cure brain disease — and the trends shaping the next decades: whole-brain maps, cell atlases, brain-computer interfaces, AI, precision psychiatry and ethics. January 21, 2026 · 3 min read

Intermediate

Builds on the basics. Introduces the real vocabulary and the mechanisms behind it.

81 entries

Neuroscience Foundations Intermediate Levels of Analysis: From Molecules to Minds Why one behaviour can be explained at many levels at once — genes, molecules, synapses, neurons, circuits, brain systems and behaviour — and how David Marr's three levels changed the way neuroscientists ask questions. September 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Neuroscience Foundations Intermediate The Brain in Evolution From the simple nerve nets of jellyfish to the centralised brains of insects, octopuses, birds and primates: how nervous systems evolved, and what is — and isn't — special about the human brain. April 22, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Intermediate Descartes and the Mechanical Reflex René Descartes pictured the body as a machine of tubes and valves, sketched the first reflex, put the soul in the pineal gland — and left neuroscience the mind-body problem. February 3, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Intermediate Golgi, Cajal and the Neuron Doctrine A silver stain that blackened one cell in a hundred settled the most important question in neuroscience: is the nervous system one continuous web, or made of separate cells? January 17, 2026 · 3 min read

History of Neuroscience Intermediate Sherrington and the Synapse Charles Sherrington named the synapse in 1897, showed that reflexes integrate excitation and inhibition, and gave neuroscience the idea of the nervous system as an integrator. June 18, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Intermediate Soups and Sparks: The Discovery of Chemical Transmission Otto Loewi's dream experiment with two frog hearts proved that nerves talk with chemicals — and set off a decades-long 'war of the soups and the sparks'. August 23, 2026 · 2 min read

History of Neuroscience Intermediate Hubel, Wiesel and the Visual Cortex A slide jammed in a projector revealed that neurons in the visual cortex respond to edges at particular angles — and opened up how the brain builds vision piece by piece. April 28, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Intermediate Eric Kandel and the Sea Slug How a refugee from Vienna used a giant sea slug, Aplysia, to show that learning changes the strength of synapses — and that long-term memory needs new proteins and new connections. June 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Pioneers & Nobel Laureates Intermediate O'Keefe, the Mosers and the Brain's GPS Place cells that fire in one spot, grid cells that tile space in triangles: how John O'Keefe and May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered the brain's positioning system and shared the 2014 Nobel Prize. October 8, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Intermediate Astrocytes Star-shaped glial cells that wrap synapses, buffer chemicals, feed neurons, control blood flow and help build the blood-brain barrier — and may take part in processing information. January 13, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Intermediate Microglia: The Brain's Immune Cells Microglia constantly survey the brain, eat debris and invaders, prune unwanted synapses during development — and are now central suspects in Alzheimer's disease and other conditions. August 14, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Intermediate Myelin and Oligodendrocytes Myelin, the fatty insulation wrapped around axons by oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells, speeds nerve signals up to around a hundred times — and its loss causes diseases such as multiple sclerosis. April 13, 2026 · 2 min read

Cells of the Nervous System Intermediate The Blood-Brain Barrier A tightly sealed lining of the brain's blood vessels keeps toxins and germs out — and most medicines too. How it works, how it was discovered, and why drug designers wrestle with it. May 5, 2026 · 2 min read

Neural Signaling Intermediate Ion Channels and Pumps The protein pores and machines in the cell membrane that make neural signalling possible — voltage-gated, ligand-gated and mechanically gated channels, pumps and transporters — and the toxins and drugs that target them. February 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Intermediate The Action Potential The nerve impulse step by step: threshold, the rush of sodium, the overshoot, potassium repolarisation, the refractory period — and why every spike is all-or-nothing. July 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Intermediate Saltatory Conduction: Why Myelin Makes Signals Fast How action potentials 'jump' from one node of Ranvier to the next along myelinated axons — and why this lets vertebrates send fast signals through thin nerves. November 23, 2025 · 2 min read

Neural Signaling Intermediate Electrical Synapses and Gap Junctions Not every synapse uses chemicals. Gap junctions directly connect the insides of neighbouring cells, allowing instant electrical coupling that synchronises neurons, heart cells and glia. August 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate Glutamate and GABA: The Brain's Accelerator and Brake The two most abundant transmitters in the brain — glutamate exciting, GABA inhibiting — how their balance keeps the brain stable, and what alcohol, anaesthetics, sedatives and seizures have to do with it. June 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate Acetylcholine The first neurotransmitter ever identified: it moves every skeletal muscle, slows the heart, sharpens attention and memory — and is the target of curare, nerve agents, Alzheimer's drugs and myasthenia gravis. December 21, 2025 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate Noradrenaline and Adrenaline The fight-or-flight chemicals: noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus tunes alertness and attention in the brain, while adrenaline from the adrenal glands readies the body for action. December 6, 2025 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate Endorphins and Other Neuropeptides The brain's own opioids, substance P, orexin, neuropeptide Y and more: slower, longer-acting chemical messengers built from short chains of amino acids. September 21, 2026 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate Hormones and the Brain How the brain controls the body's hormone system through the hypothalamus and pituitary — and how hormones such as cortisol, oxytocin, sex hormones, thyroid hormone and melatonin act back on the brain. October 29, 2025 · 2 min read

Neurotransmitters & Brain Chemistry Intermediate The Endocannabinoid System The brain's own cannabis-like signalling system: anandamide and 2-AG, CB1 and CB2 receptors, messages that travel backwards across synapses — and what THC and CBD actually do. September 6, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Limbic System The hippocampus, amygdala, cingulate cortex, hypothalamus and their connections: what the 'emotional brain' idea got right, and why many neuroscientists now treat the term with caution. July 18, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Hippocampus A seahorse-shaped structure deep in the temporal lobe that is essential for forming new memories and for finding your way — and one of the first places damaged in Alzheimer's disease. April 16, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Amygdala An almond-sized cluster of nuclei that detects threats and other emotionally important events, drives fear learning, and tags memories with emotion. September 12, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Thalamus The brain's central switchboard: a pair of egg-shaped structures that relay and gate almost every sensory signal on its way to the cortex, and help regulate sleep, attention and consciousness. October 4, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Hypothalamus and Pituitary A region the size of an almond that keeps the body in balance — temperature, hunger, thirst, sleep, sex and stress — by commanding the autonomic nervous system and the pituitary gland. May 26, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Cerebellum The 'little brain' at the back of the head holds most of the brain's neurons and fine-tunes movement, balance and timing — and turns out to help with thinking and emotion too. January 4, 2026 · 2 min read

Brain Anatomy Intermediate The Brainstem Medulla, pons and midbrain: the compact stalk that keeps you breathing, keeps your heart beating, wakes you up and carries every message between brain and body. June 3, 2026 · 2 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Intermediate The Gut-Brain Axis The 'second brain' of the enteric nervous system, the vagus nerve, gut hormones and the microbiome: what's known about two-way traffic between gut and brain — and what's still hype. November 10, 2025 · 2 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Intermediate Cerebrospinal Fluid and the Ventricles The clear fluid that cushions the brain and spinal cord: where it's made, how it circulates through four ventricles, what a lumbar puncture tells doctors, and what happens when it backs up. May 28, 2026 · 3 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Intermediate The Brain's Blood Supply Four arteries, a safety ring called the circle of Willis, and an organ that can't store fuel: how the brain is fed, why blood flow follows activity, and what goes wrong in a stroke. April 9, 2026 · 2 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Intermediate The Twelve Cranial Nerves From smell to swallowing: the twelve pairs of nerves that leave the brain directly, what each one does, and how doctors test them at the bedside. January 15, 2026 · 2 min read

Development & Plasticity Intermediate Synaptic Pruning The developing brain makes far more connections than it needs, then removes the unused ones. How 'use it or lose it' sculpts circuits through childhood and adolescence. November 4, 2025 · 3 min read

Development & Plasticity Intermediate Critical Periods: Windows of Opportunity Imprinting ducklings, kittens with one eye covered, children learning languages and orphans in Romania: the evidence for sensitive windows when experience shapes the brain most powerfully. May 13, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Vision: From Eye to Brain How light becomes sight: rods and cones in the retina, the blind spot, the optic chiasm, the thalamus, the primary visual cortex and the 'what' and 'where' streams. February 28, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Color Vision Three kinds of cones, opponent channels, colour constancy and the dress: how the brain turns three signals into millions of colours — and why some people see colours differently. March 17, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Hearing From air pressure waves to music and speech: the eardrum and ossicles, the cochlea's piano-keyboard of hair cells, sound localisation with microsecond precision, hearing loss and cochlear implants. October 2, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Pain and How the Brain Feels It Nociceptors, fast and slow pain, the capsaicin receptor, the gate control theory, people who feel no pain, chronic pain and the power of placebo — why pain is an experience made by the brain. November 19, 2025 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Balance and Proprioception The hidden senses: the vestibular system's spinning canals and gravity sensors, the reflex that keeps your vision steady, motion sickness, and the muscle sensors that tell you where your limbs are. February 13, 2026 · 3 min read

Senses & Perception Intermediate Interoception: Sensing Your Inner Body Heartbeat, breathing, hunger, a full bladder: how the brain senses the state of the body from the inside, the role of the insula, and links to emotion, anxiety and wellbeing. March 6, 2026 · 2 min read

Movement & Motor Control Intermediate The Motor Cortex and the Homunculus From Fritsch and Hitzig's dogs to Penfield's maps and modern brain-computer interfaces: how the motor cortex represents the body, and why the neat 'little man' is only part of the story. March 23, 2026 · 3 min read

Movement & Motor Control Intermediate Motor Learning: How We Learn Skills From clumsy beginner to automatic expert: the stages of skill learning, the cerebellum's error correction, the basal ganglia's habits, the role of sleep — and what it means for practice. March 19, 2026 · 2 min read

Movement & Motor Control Intermediate Mirror Neurons: Fact and Hype Neurons that fire both when a monkey acts and when it watches someone else act: a fascinating discovery from Parma, the grand claims made for it — empathy, language, autism — and what the evidence supports. January 23, 2026 · 2 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Memory Consolidation and Sleep How fragile new memories become stable: synaptic and systems consolidation, the hippocampus replaying the day during sleep, and the surprising discovery that recalled memories become changeable again. October 31, 2025 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Attention The cocktail party effect, the spotlight of attention, the brain networks that direct it, why multitasking fails, and how the brain decides what to ignore. February 7, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Language and the Brain From Broca and Wernicke to modern networks: how the brain produces and understands speech, reading, sign language and multiple languages — and what aphasia, dyslexia and FOXP2 reveal. July 13, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Decision-Making and the Brain How the brain weighs options: value signals in the orbitofrontal cortex, dopamine-driven learning, emotions as guides (Damasio's somatic markers), and the shortcuts and biases studied by behavioural economics. August 18, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Executive Function and the Prefrontal Cortex The brain's management system: inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility, how they're measured, how they develop, and what happens when the prefrontal cortex is damaged. December 31, 2025 · 2 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Intermediate Intelligence and the Brain What IQ tests measure, the 'g' factor, how brain size and networks relate to intelligence, genes and environment, the Flynn effect — and the myth of Einstein's extraordinary brain. September 4, 2026 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Intermediate Fear and Anxiety Circuits How the brain detects threat, learns fear and unlearns it: the amygdala, the fast and slow roads, fear conditioning and extinction, the prefrontal brake, and how anxiety differs from fear. June 14, 2026 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Intermediate The Social Brain Reading faces, understanding other minds, belonging and exclusion: the brain networks for social life, the social brain hypothesis, and why loneliness matters for health. February 18, 2026 · 3 min read

Emotion, Motivation & the Social Brain Intermediate Hunger, Thirst and Appetite How the hypothalamus balances energy and water: leptin and ghrelin, the AgRP and POMC neurons, thirst sensors, reward-driven eating, and how GLP-1 drugs act on the brain. December 20, 2025 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Intermediate What Is Consciousness? The 'hard problem', the search for neural correlates of consciousness, blindsight and split brains, and the difference between being conscious and being conscious of something. June 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Intermediate Anaesthesia, Coma and Disorders of Consciousness From the first public ether operation in 1846 to modern intensive care: how anaesthesia switches consciousness off, and how doctors distinguish coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, locked-in syndrome and brain death. April 24, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Intermediate Free Will and the Brain Libet's famous experiment, the readiness potential, brain scans that predict choices seconds early, newer reinterpretations — and what neuroscience can and can't say about free will. September 8, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Intermediate Multiple Sclerosis An autoimmune disease that strips myelin from nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord: symptoms, the relapsing and progressive forms, the strong link with Epstein-Barr virus, diagnosis and modern treatments. March 9, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Intermediate Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) The disease that kills motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord: symptoms, genetics (SOD1, C9orf72, TDP-43), Lou Gehrig and Stephen Hawking, the Ice Bucket Challenge, and the first gene-targeted treatment. December 25, 2025 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Intermediate Huntington's Disease An inherited disease caused by a repeated stretch of DNA in one gene: involuntary movements, psychiatric and cognitive changes, the Venezuelan families who helped find the gene, genetic testing dilemmas and the hunt for treatments. May 9, 2026 · 3 min read

Neurological Disorders Intermediate Brain Tumours Primary versus secondary tumours, gliomas, meningiomas and glioblastoma, symptoms, the molecular revolution in classification, and treatment with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. February 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Intermediate Schizophrenia Hallucinations, delusions, negative and cognitive symptoms; the dopamine and glutamate hypotheses, genetic and developmental risk, early intervention, and the first new class of antipsychotic in decades. February 14, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Intermediate Bipolar Disorder Episodes of mania and depression: types of bipolar disorder, what's known about its biology, the story of lithium, and the role of sleep and body clocks. March 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Intermediate Addiction How drugs and behaviours hijack reward, learning and self-control circuits; tolerance and withdrawal; the brain-disease model and its critics; Rat Park; and effective treatments for opioid, alcohol and nicotine addiction. November 12, 2025 · 3 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Intermediate PTSD Post-traumatic stress disorder: from 'shell shock' to modern diagnosis, intrusive memories and hypervigilance, fear circuits that fail to switch off, and trauma-focused therapies that work. March 30, 2026 · 2 min read

Mental Health & Neurodevelopment Intermediate Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Far more than tidiness: intrusive obsessions, compulsions that relieve anxiety but feed the cycle, the cortico-striatal-thalamic loop, and treatment with exposure and response prevention, SSRIs and brain stimulation. September 30, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate EEG and MEG Recording the brain's electrical rhythms through the scalp, from Hans Berger's alpha waves in the 1920s to event-related potentials, sleep studies, epilepsy diagnosis and wearable magnetoencephalography. August 6, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate MRI and fMRI How magnets, radio waves and hydrogen atoms produce detailed brain images; how functional MRI tracks activity through blood oxygen; diffusion imaging of white matter; and the famous dead salmon that taught a statistical lesson. June 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate PET and SPECT Imaging the brain's chemistry with radioactive tracers: glucose metabolism, dopamine and serotonin systems, amyloid and tau in Alzheimer's disease, and the trade-offs of nuclear imaging. December 27, 2025 · 2 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate Brain Stimulation: TMS, tDCS and ECT Changing brain activity from outside the skull: transcranial magnetic stimulation for research and depression, weak electrical currents (tDCS) and their hype, and the history and modern reality of electroconvulsive therapy. August 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate Microscopy, Staining and Tissue Clearing From Nissl and Golgi stains to electron microscopy, confocal and two-photon imaging, rainbow-coloured Brainbow mice, see-through brains with CLARITY, and expansion microscopy that physically enlarges tissue. July 30, 2026 · 2 min read

Tools & Methods Intermediate Animal Models in Neuroscience Why neuroscience studies worms, flies, fish, mice, rats, songbirds and monkeys; what each species offers; the limits of translating animal findings to humans; brain organoids; and the ethics of the 3Rs. December 8, 2025 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Intermediate Computational Neuroscience Using mathematics and computer models to understand how the brain computes: from Hodgkin–Huxley and McCulloch–Pitts to Hopfield networks, reinforcement learning and large-scale simulations. June 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Intermediate Brain Networks and the Default Mode The brain as a network: small-world wiring, hubs and the rich club, large-scale networks such as the default mode, salience and control networks, and what network science reveals about health and disease. June 29, 2026 · 2 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Intermediate Neuromorphic Computing Chips that compute like brains: spiking neurons, event-driven processing and in-memory computation — from Carver Mead's 1980s vision to TrueNorth, Loihi, SpiNNaker and event cameras. March 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Treatments & Therapies Intermediate How Brain Drugs Work Agonists, antagonists, reuptake inhibitors and enzyme blockers: the basic ways medicines and recreational drugs change brain signalling — plus the blood-brain barrier problem and the surprising role of serendipity. January 2, 2026 · 3 min read

Treatments & Therapies Intermediate Antidepressants and Psychiatric Medication The main classes of psychiatric medication — antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, anxiolytics and stimulants — how they work, how well they work, side effects, and practical facts patients should know. January 30, 2026 · 3 min read

Treatments & Therapies Intermediate Deep Brain Stimulation A 'pacemaker for the brain': implanted electrodes delivering continuous pulses to deep structures to treat Parkinson's disease, tremor, dystonia, epilepsy and OCD — how it was discovered, how it might work, and the new adaptive systems. August 16, 2026 · 3 min read

Treatments & Therapies Intermediate Psychedelic Research From Albert Hofmann's bicycle ride in 1943 through prohibition to today's clinical trials: how psilocybin, LSD and MDMA act on the brain, what the evidence for treating depression and PTSD shows, and the risks. March 28, 2026 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Intermediate Neuroethics The ethics of knowing and changing brains: neural data privacy and 'neurorights', cognitive enhancement, incidental findings, consent and identity in brain implants, brain death, and the moral status of brain organoids. August 8, 2026 · 3 min read

Everyday Brain, Ethics & the Future Intermediate Neuroscience and the Law Brain scans in the courtroom, fMRI lie detection, the teenage brain in Supreme Court decisions, tumours and responsibility, eyewitness memory — and the limits of using group-level brain science to judge individuals. September 25, 2026 · 3 min read

Advanced

The detailed machinery — ions, receptors, circuits and methods. Read the linked concepts first.

19 entries

History of Neuroscience Advanced Hodgkin, Huxley and the Squid Giant Axon Using a nerve fibre half a millimetre wide and a clever circuit called the voltage clamp, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley worked out exactly how the action potential is made — and wrote it down as equations still used today. May 19, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Advanced The Resting Membrane Potential Why a neuron sits at about −70 millivolts: unequal ion concentrations, a membrane leaky mainly to potassium, the sodium-potassium pump, and the equations — Nernst and Goldman — that describe them. July 15, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Advanced Neurotransmitter Release: Vesicles, Calcium and SNAREs The molecular machinery of the presynaptic terminal: quantal release, calcium triggering, the SNARE proteins that zip vesicles to the membrane, and the toxins — botulinum and tetanus — that cut them. April 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Advanced Receptors: Ionotropic and Metabotropic The two great families of neurotransmitter receptor: fast ion-channel receptors that open in a millisecond, and slower G-protein-coupled receptors that trigger chemical cascades — and why the same transmitter can do opposite things. March 13, 2026 · 3 min read

Neural Signaling Advanced Synaptic Integration: How Neurons Add Up Their Inputs EPSPs and IPSPs, temporal and spatial summation, shunting inhibition and dendritic spikes: how a single neuron combines thousands of inputs into one decision. September 23, 2026 · 3 min read

Brain Anatomy Advanced The Basal Ganglia A set of deep nuclei — striatum, globus pallidus, subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra — that select actions, form habits and learn from reward, through 'go' and 'no-go' pathways. March 21, 2026 · 3 min read

Spinal Cord & Body Wiring Advanced The Glymphatic System: Does the Brain Wash Itself at Night? A 2012 discovery proposed that cerebrospinal fluid flushes through brain tissue along blood vessels — especially during sleep — to clear waste like amyloid. What the evidence shows, and why the idea is now hotly debated. March 4, 2026 · 3 min read

Development & Plasticity Advanced Neurogenesis and Neural Migration How progenitor cells in the developing brain divide to make neurons, how the cortex is built inside-out along radial glia, and what happens when migration goes wrong. December 18, 2025 · 2 min read

Development & Plasticity Advanced Axon Guidance: How Neurons Find Their Partners Growth cones, attractive and repulsive cues, Sperry's chemoaffinity hypothesis, and the molecules — netrins, slits, semaphorins, ephrins — that wire the developing brain. April 7, 2026 · 2 min read

Development & Plasticity Advanced Adult Neurogenesis: Do We Grow New Neurons? For a century, textbooks said adults never make new brain cells. Then rodents, songbirds and radiocarbon from nuclear tests suggested otherwise — and the human question is still fiercely debated. December 10, 2025 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Advanced How Memories Are Made: LTP and Engrams Long-term potentiation, NMDA receptors, AMPA receptor insertion, protein synthesis and memory engrams: the cellular and molecular basis of learning — and how scientists have reactivated specific memories with light. July 7, 2026 · 3 min read

Learning, Memory & Thinking Advanced Place Cells, Grid Cells and Navigation The brain's positioning system in detail: place cells, grid cells, head-direction cells, border and speed cells, theta rhythm and phase precession — and how navigation circuits may support memory and abstract thought. July 3, 2026 · 3 min read

Sleep & Consciousness Advanced Theories of Consciousness Global workspace theory, integrated information theory, higher-order theories, recurrent processing and predictive processing — what each claims, how they differ, and the adversarial collaborations testing them. August 3, 2026 · 3 min read

Tools & Methods Advanced Recording Single Neurons and the Patch Clamp From Adrian's single nerve fibres to microelectrodes in behaving animals, the patch clamp that captured single ion channels, Neuropixels probes recording thousands of cells, and calcium imaging with glowing proteins. July 20, 2026 · 2 min read

Tools & Methods Advanced Optogenetics: Controlling Neurons with Light Borrowing light-sensitive proteins from algae to switch specific neurons on and off in milliseconds: how optogenetics works, what it has revealed, chemogenetics, and its first steps toward human therapy. March 11, 2026 · 2 min read

Tools & Methods Advanced Connectomics: Mapping Every Connection From the 302-neuron worm in 1986 to a complete fruit-fly brain in 2024, a cubic millimetre of human cortex and mouse visual cortex in 2025: how scientists map neural wiring synapse by synapse, and what the maps reveal. November 13, 2025 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Advanced Neural Coding: How Neurons Represent Information Rate codes and timing codes, population vectors, sparse coding and 'concept cells' that respond to Jennifer Aniston: how patterns of spikes carry information about the world and our actions. April 3, 2026 · 3 min read

Computational Neuroscience & AI Advanced The Predictive Brain Predictive processing, the Bayesian brain and the free-energy principle: the influential idea that the brain constantly predicts its inputs and learns from prediction errors — and what it explains about perception, action and mental illness. May 1, 2026 · 2 min read

Treatments & Therapies Advanced Gene and Cell Therapies for the Brain Antisense drugs and AAV gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, ALS and rare disorders; stem-cell-derived dopamine neurons for Parkinson's; and the challenges of getting genetic medicines into the nervous system. September 15, 2026 · 3 min read

About this project

NeuroScience Decoded is an independent, plain-language encyclopedia of the brain and nervous system. It covers what neuroscience is, five thousand years of its history and the people who made it, how neurons and synapses work, brain chemistry and anatomy, development, the senses, movement, memory, emotion, sleep and consciousness, neurological and mental health conditions, the tools scientists use, the overlap with artificial intelligence, treatments, and the ethics and future of the field.

Every entry is written to be understood by a curious reader with no science background. Each one is tagged Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced, opens with an In plain English summary, offers everyday analogies and try-it-yourself examples, ends with key takeaways, and links to the concepts worth reading first.