13. Advanced Neurology and Endocrinology

Stanford University.

Where have we got to now?

You guys have all the basics in hand

now for our next two buckets-- neurobiology and endocrinology.

What you have now, I hope, is a sense of especially the neuro

as the final common funnel out of which

comes all that behavior stuff we've been thinking

about-- genes-- whether they are changing in a static

and then punctuated way or a gradualist way.

What they code for we now know are proteins.

And in the realm of behavior, what that's all about,

you now know, are enzymes that make neurotransmitters, enzymes

that break them apart, receptors for neurotransmitters, the ion

channels that allow all the excitability stuff--

all of that should be a way of conceptualizing

what all that gene stuff that we've had so far funnels into.

Likewise with the endocrinology-- all those ways

in which reproductive status is going

to change how the brain works, all

of those great evolutionary models, blah, blah.

That's now endocrinology.

That's now the ability of hormones

to affect the nervous system.

And what came through, hopefully,

over and over for all of you in the lectures over the last week

are two themes-- lots of different ways

by which the nervous system and the endocrine system

can change its function over time.

And number two, lots of different realms

where there will be individual differences--

all the ways in which you will have

a brain and a bunch of glands that

are different than the person sitting next to you.

And what you should be able to piece apart readily by now

is where some of those individual differences

are coming from in the form of genetic influences,

where some of them are coming from environmental ones,

to begin to take some of those if/then clauses

back in the genetics lectures-- if it smells like a relative,