Fundamentals of Neurobiology – Systems Neuroscience

A slide introducing Fundamentals of Neuroscience - System Neuroscience slide deck

Neural systems includes both sensory systems, motor systems and associational systems

Slide introducing sensory systems as part of the Fundamentals of Neuroscience slide deck

Image showing sensory receptors converting stimuli (chemical, thermal, mechanical, light) into neural signals, highlighting receptor specificity.

Diagram of receptive fields showing how overlapping neuron inputs improve sensory perception and how receptor density affects spatial resolution.

Diagram showing sensory adaptation and topographic mapping, with reduced response to constant stimuli and spatial organization of sensory inputs.

Diagram showing sensory pathways and hierarchical processing, with signals moving from receptors to cortex and increasing complexity across levels.

Image showing modality-specific and parallel sensory processing, with different brain areas handling distinct features simultaneously.

Rubin’s vase illusion showing a vase or two faces, illustrating how perception is shaped by attention, context, and prior experience.

Diagram of the auditory system showing outer, middle, and inner ear structures and how sound is transmitted and converted into neural signals.

Slide showing the auditory pathway showing signal transmission from cochlea to brainstem, thalamus, and auditory cortex.

Slide illustrating the visual system showing eye anatomy and retinal layers, including photoreceptors and signal transmission to the optic nerve.

The visual pathway showing binocular vision, optic chiasm crossing, and signal flow from retina to visual cortex.

The visual pathway showing ventral “what” and dorsal “where” streams and projections from thalamus to visual cortex.

Diagram of the olfactory system showing nasal receptors, olfactory bulb, and pathways to brain regions involved in smell processing.

Image of the gustatory system showing taste receptors, cranial nerves, and pathways to the brainstem, thalamus, and gustatory cortex.

Table of somatosensory receptor types showing mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors and their roles in touch, temperature, and pain.

Slide with somatosensory pathways showing dorsal column and spinothalamic tracts carrying touch, pain, and temperature signals to the brain.

Slide describing somatosensory cortex functions (S1, S2) and related disorders such as neuropathy, phantom limb, and agnosia.

Slide introducing the motor systems chapter

Slide of motor systems showing basal ganglia, cerebellum, motor cortex, and spinal circuits coordinating voluntary and involuntary movement.

Upper motor neurons initiate movement from the brain, while lower motor neurons transmit signals to muscles to produce voluntary movement.

Slide explaining major descending motor pathways, including corticospinal, corticobulbar, and extrapyramidal tracts controlling movement, posture, and balance.

Slide explaining basal ganglia circuitry showing connections between cortex, striatum, thalamus, and midbrain in movement regulation.

Cerebellar signalling pathways linking cortex, thalamus, and brainstem, showing its role in coordinating movement and balance.

Alpha and gamma motor neurons innervating muscle fibres and spindles, with sensory neurons regulating contraction and proprioception.

Slide of motor units showing one motor neuron innervating multiple muscle fibres, and grouping of units into a motor pool.

Slide of motor unit types: slow, fast fatigue-resistant, and fast fatigable, with differences in contraction speed, force, and fatigue.

Slide on spinal cord role in motor control, including descending input, reflexes, and central pattern generators for rhythmic movement.

Slide of proprioception showing muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs sending sensory feedback to spinal cord and motor neurons.

Slide introducing associational systems

Slide explaining the limbic system structures including hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and cingulate gyrus involved in emotion and memory.

Table of limbic system structures and functions, including amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, and cingulate gyrus.

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The nervous system can be understood as a set of functional systems that process sensory information, generate movement, and integrate experience into cognition and behaviour. This slide deck introduces key principles of systems neuroscience, including sensory transduction, receptive fields, topographic mapping, and hierarchical processing, before outlining major sensory, motor, and associational systems. Together, these topics provide a foundation for understanding nervous system structure and function across distributed neural circuits.

This deck is the second part of a three-part series of slide decks explaining the fundamentals of neurobiology. You can find the first part, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, here, and the third part, Regional Neuroscience, here.

This slide deck was developed by Dr. Bryn Farnsworth von Cederwald and Dr. Martin Meyer, and reviewed by Professor Matthew Grubb, King’s College London, in collaboration with Cambridge (a division of Prime, Cambridge, UK).

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Systems neuroscience

Systems neuroscience

Systems neuroscience

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Neural systems

Neural systems

References:
1. Augustine GJ, Groh JM, Huettel SA, et al. Neuroscience, 7th edition. Oxford University Press Academic US; 2023.
2. Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science, 6th edition. McGraw-Hill Professional; 2021.

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Sensory systems

Sensory systems

Sensory systems

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Principles of sensory systems (I)

Principles of sensory systems (I)

Receptors are crucial for transducing chemical, mechanical, thermal or light stimuli into signals that the rest of the nervous system will understand.² They are highly specialized in their transduction: even receptor classes that are part of the same (e.g., somatosensory)…

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Principles of sensory systems (II)

Principles of sensory systems (II)

The receptive field of a neuron usually coincides with its perceptive field – the area from which a sensation is perceived to arise.² The overlapping of receptive fields of individual neurons allows for perception to smoothly move from one sensory neuron to the next.²

The…

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Principles of sensory systems (III)

Principles of sensory systems (III)

‘Slowly adapting receptors’ respond to prolonged and constant stimulation, and generate action potentials throughout the entire stimulation period; ‘rapidly adapting receptors’ fire only at the beginning and at the end of a stimulus, and stop firing in response to stimula…

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Principles of sensory systems (IV)

Principles of sensory systems (IV)

References:
1.Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science, 6th edition. McGraw-Hill Professional; 2021.
2.Squire LR, Berg D, Bloom FE, et al. Fundamental Neuroscience, 4th edition. Elsevier S&T; 2012.
3.Nieto MP. Human visual pathway. Avail…

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Principles of sensory systems (V)

Principles of sensory systems (V)

Sensory perception and movement, as well as complex cognitive functions such as language, thought and memory, are made possible by the interlinkage of serial and parallel processing in different brain regions.² Damage to a single specific area therefore may not result in …

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Principles of sensory systems (VI)

Principles of sensory systems (VI)

Interestingly, sensory information used to control actions is processed in neural pathways separate from the afferent pathways that contribute to conscious perception.2 For example, visual information seems to flow in two separate streams in the brain: a dorsal stream pro…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the auditory system

Sensory systems of the brain: the auditory system

Adults with normal hearing can detect sounds falling within the frequency range of 20 to 20,000 Hz; the higher end of the audible range usually decreases slightly with age.¹ The human ear is especially sensitive to frequencies around 2,000 to 5,000 Hz.¹ This appears to be…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the auditory pathway

Sensory systems of the brain: the auditory pathway

References:
1.Squire LR, Berg D, Bloom FE, et al. Fundamental Neuroscience, 4th edition. Elsevier S&T; 2012.
2.Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science, 6th edition. McGraw-Hill Professional; 2021.
3.Peelle JE. Auditory pathway. Availabl…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the visual system

Sensory systems of the brain: the visual system

The retina is a thick (few hundred micrometres) sheet of neurons.² It contains five major cell types, arranged in three cellular layers (i. photoreceptors [rods or cones]; ii. horizontal, bipolar and amacrine cells; iii. ganglion cells), separated by the outer and inner (…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the visual pathway (I)

Sensory systems of the brain: the visual pathway (I)

References:
1.Augustine GJ, Groh JM, Huettel SA, et al. Neuroscience, 7th edition. Oxford University Press Academic US; 2023.
2.Nieto MP. Human visual pathway. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37868501. Accessed September 2025.

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Sensory systems of the brain: the visual pathway (II)

Sensory systems of the brain: the visual pathway (II)

A greater portion of the brain is devoted to processing visual information than to any other sensory function:⁴ almost half of the cerebral cortex.²

Visual/light input is crucial for multiple other key biological functions apart from visual perception.² An important examp…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the olfactory system

Sensory systems of the brain: the olfactory system

Apart from the main olfactory pathway, many species also have an accessory olfactory pathway for the detection of pheromones: species- and gender-specific chemical cues that provide information about an individual’s social, sexual and reproductive status.³ The sensory str…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the gustatory system

Sensory systems of the brain: the gustatory system

The gustatory system is a specialized sensory system dedicated to evaluating potential food sources, and is the main driver of feeding decisions.¹ In contrast to the olfactory system, which can distinguish millions of kinds of odours, the gustatory system can only disting…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory system

Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory system

The primary sensory cells of the somatosensory system are the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons.¹ Individual neurons within a DRG respond selectively to specific types of stimuli because of specific morphological and molecular features of their peripheral terminals.¹

Whe…

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Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory pathway (I)

Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory pathway (I)

References:
1.Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science, 6th edition. McGraw-Hill Professional; 2021.
2. Augustine GJ, Groh JM, Huettel SA, et al. Neuroscience, 7th edition. Oxford University Press Academic US; 2023.

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Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory pathway (II)

Sensory systems of the brain: the somatosensory pathway (II)

An important source of information about the function of different neural structures, including the posterior parietal cortex, are studies of naturally occurring or experimental lesions, which have demonstrated the crucial role of the parietal cortex in linking sensory in…

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