As you read this, your brain is alive with a flurry of activity, including:

• directing the movement of your eyes


• decoding the electrical impulses from your retina


• recognizing the pattern of words and phrases and extracting their meaning


• controlling your breathing, heart rate, and body temperature


• adjusting your posture


• screening out the buzz of background stimuli

Everything that goes on inside your body and every interaction you have with the outside world is controlled by your brain. It allows you to cope masterfully with your everyday environment. It is capable of producing breathtaking athletic feats, sublime works of art, and profound scientific insights. It also produces the enormous range of emotional responses that can take us from the depths of depression to the heights of euphoria.

Considering everything the brain does, how can this relatively small mass of tissue possibly be the source of our personalities, dreams, thoughts, sensations, utterances, and movements?

Understanding the Brain, a 36-lecture course by award-winning Professor Jeanette Norden of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, takes you inside this astonishingly complex organ and shows you how it works, from the gross level of its organization to the molecular level of how cells in the brain communicate. With its combination of neurology, biology, and psychology, this course will help you understand how we perceive the world through our senses, how we move, how we learn and remember, and how emotions affect our thoughts and actions.

 The Great Courses® Understanding the Brain

Taught By Professor Jeanette Norden, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
Vanderbilt University