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YOUR NEXT DISCOVERY

The Human Brain: from signals to yourself

Follow a thought from living cells to memory, movement and the mysteries still being explored.

7 Units25 MissionsAbout 9 hours

Complete the Course to Earn a Certificate and Join the Hall of Fame

A luminous coral human brain above a mint platform, surrounded by symbols for sight, sound and touch. Decorative illustration, not an anatomical measurement.
An imaginative close-up of branching neurons and a glowing connection between separate endings. Decorative illustration, not a molecular scale model.

A CLOSER LOOK

Meet your nervous system

Understand the systems behind perception, movement, memory and emotion, and learn to judge extraordinary claims about the brain.

See it. Try it. Make it yours.

  1. Meet your nervous system

  2. How living cells send signals

  3. Build a world and move through it

Curious teens and adults with basic biology; no prior neuroscience. · What to know before you start

Bring with you: The body is made of living cells, with membranes and internal parts; organs contain cooperating cells. Read everyday English and use addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and simple fractions. A calculator is welcome.

Understand the systems behind perception, movement, memory and emotion, and learn to judge extraordinary claims about the brain.

Begin with brain and body. Build electrical and chemical signalling, explore thinking and learning, and finish by evaluating a neuroscience study. All numerical research cases are labelled invented.

By the end, you can…

  • Connect brain, body and cells without reducing a person to a single brain region.
  • Explain electrical and chemical signalling, combine inputs and predict the effect of disrupted insulation.
  • Explain how sensation, attention and movement emerge from interacting pathways.
  • Distinguish memory systems, explain a mechanism of lasting synaptic change and reason about language networks.
  • Connect body regulation, emotion and reward learning while avoiding single-chemical explanations.
  • Explain sleep regulation, development and the limits of current explanations of consciousness.
  • Interpret brain measurements, compare causal explanations and design a bounded test of a learning claim.

For another Course

  • Clinical diagnosis or treatment advice; interpreting a real individual scan.
  • An exhaustive medical anatomy course or laboratory qualification.
  • Calculus-based electrophysiology, detailed computational modelling and all disease mechanisms.
  • A settled solution to consciousness or a promise of improved intelligence.

YOUR LEARNING PATH

One idea leads to the next.

View Course Map →
Unit 1

Meet your nervous system

Connect brain, body and cells without reducing a person to a single brain region.

  1. Mission 1 of 25Your brain is part of a conversationTrace incoming information, central processing and outgoing control in a familiar action.Up next
  2. Mission 2 of 25Find your way around the brainLocate major brain structures and explain why a function usually needs a network.Up next
  3. Mission 3 of 25Meet the cells behind the signalsRelate a typical neuron and several glial functions to their shared work.Up next
Unit 2

How living cells send signals

Explain electrical and chemical signalling, combine inputs and predict the effect of disrupted insulation.

Unit 3

Build a world and move through it

Explain how sensation, attention and movement emerge from interacting pathways.

Unit 4

How experience changes you

Distinguish memory systems, explain a mechanism of lasting synaptic change and reason about language networks.

Unit 5

A brain with a body

Connect body regulation, emotion and reward learning while avoiding single-chemical explanations.

Unit 6

A brain that changes state

Explain sleep regulation, development and the limits of current explanations of consciousness.

Unit 7

Think like a neuroscientist

Interpret brain measurements, compare causal explanations and design a bounded test of a learning claim.

A Debsie Course · Curious teens and adults with basic biology; no prior neuroscience.