Talk:Neurobiology

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[edit] Shifting it to Cellular neuroscience

The term neurobiology is used indistinguishably from Neuroscience (Eg: Principles of Neural Science by Kandel et. al. use the term 'Neurobiology of Behavior'). Using it to describe just the study of neurons at a cellular level would be a restrictive usage. 'Cellular neuroscience' is a term that better reflects this field (Eg. Journal of Neuroscience classifies the single cell electrophysiology (like patch clamp) articles under the heading Cellular/Molecular ; This is also the heading under which Fundamental Neuroscience editors Squire et. al list their sections on action potentials and like [1]). So I propose that neurobiology become a redirect to Neuroscience and its contents moved to a new article to be named Cellular neuroscience. Please give your opinion. Shushruth 07:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. No doubt, there is an overlap in usage in some textbooks, but there is a fundamental distinction between neuroscience and neurobiology. A computer scientist for example who does computer simulations of the brain may be called a neuroscientist, but he or she is by no means a neurobiologist. I believe the wikipedia article clearly explains this. Moreover, the definition provided in the article is very much a paraphrase of the definition provided by Gordon Sheperd's textbook neurobiology. The distinction between neurobiology and neuroscience rests on the suffix -biology and -science. Take away the prefix neuro-, and you can still talk about the "biology of behavior" in a "principles of science" textbook. But that would not make biology and science anymore synonymous than neuroscience and neurobiology. As for terms such as "neurobiology of behavior, neurobiology of drug abuse," these phrases simply mean understanding studying the neurocellular bases of behavior from a biological perspective, i.e., no computer modeling, etc. And they all fall into neurobiology. The term "cellular neuroscience" is more restrictive than neurobiology. It is also convenient catergory in the journal of neuroscience, a journal that also publishes works by neuroscientists who are not necessarily neurobiologists.

mezzaninelounge 01:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explaination mezzanine. I must accept I was wrong. However, I am still trying to categorize and organize all the neuroscience related topics so that they can be entered into via the Neuroscience portal. I could use some suggestions on that count. Thanks! Shushruth 23:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Let me know what I can do to help. mezzaninelounge 08:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Although I generally support mezzanine's comment, I do not agree with his second sentence. Computational modeling is actually the area where the distinction between neuroscience and neurobiology became the more apparent. Computational Neuroscience generally describes a field overlapping cognitive science and system neuroscience. The models developed are either entirely phenomenologic (mathematical description not related to the biological substrate), or based on formal neural networks. On the contrary, Computational Neurobiology is used most often to cover the modeling of cellular behavior (axon growth, synaptic processing etc.) and the multicompartment models based on the cable approximation and description of ion channel (e.g. with the software GENESIS or NEURON). It is true that when it comes to integrate and fire neurons, the frontier is somehow a bit blurry.

You are right. No disagreement =) mezzaninelounge (talk) 00:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Typeos"

Hello. I noticed a typo in the fifth line in "Neuronal Function". "....action potentials have the advantage of travelling over long distances of neuronal processes...." I'm juust a wikibeginer, but I just thought I let you know:-)--Blackmage337 17:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)blackmage337

Thanks. You can go ahead and make changes to any typos you see. :) mezzaninelounge 19:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)