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This year marks the 30th anniversary of Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, the first college neuroscience textbook. Authored by a trio of brain scientists from Brown University, the textbook is now in its fifth edition. Spanning over a thousand pages, the textbook has educated a generation, influenced academic programs, and documented the continuous advancements in the field of neuroscience  

Addressing a New Need in Neuroscience
In 1979, Brown University introduced Neuro 001, one of the nation's earliest undergraduate courses in the subject of neuroscience. The course drew from a mix of scientific papers, book chapters, and lecturer notes.  

At the time, the field of neuroscience was still so new that a dedicated textbook did not exist, despite the Society for Neuroscience being established a decade prior. All that was known about the brain and nervous system had been compiled from psychology, biology, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and physics.   

The need for a textbook was obvious. Mark Bear, who took charge of Neuro 001 in 1986, was prompted by an editor to create one. Bear, now Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, started to write this textbook with his Brown colleagues Barry Connors and Mike Paradiso.  

The authors aimed to make the complex subject matter engaging and accessible to undergraduates with basic science knowledge, incorporating full-color printing, vivid photos, and illustrations to enhance the learning experience. They also included personal accounts from renowned figures in brain science, such as Eric Kandel, the Mosers, Solomon Snyder, and David Hubel, to bring the material to life.  

An Enduring Legacy
Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, has not only become a key part of the Neuro 001 course, but it has also achieved global recognition. Published by Jones & Barlett Learning, the textbook has been translated into multiple languages and adopted by educational institutions across six continents. More than 400 colleges and universities in the United States, including prestigious institutions like Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Texas, have incorporated it into their programs.  

Diane Lipscombe, the Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director of the Carney Institute at Brown, praised the book as a testament to the innovation of Brown's brain scientists.  

“Whether it’s textbooks for students or tools for scientists, our researchers create what’s needed to drive discovery,” she said.  

Throughout the years, Bear, Connors, and Paradiso have remained on top of the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience, from genomic sequencing to the rise of neurotechnology, and have included them in new editions of the textbook.   

The legacy of Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain is also clear in the popularity of Neuro 001 at Brown, and in the new courses it has inspired at other universities. like the one Bear established at MIT in 2003. Bear says he takes pride in the book’s role in educating new generations and enhancing scientific literacy. 

“We’re the leading undergraduate textbook and have been around more than a quarter century,” said Bear. “That’s allowed us to introduce neuroscience to a new wave of students and given others basic science literacy. I’d like to believe we’ve had a big impact.”