Customer Reviews:
 Not a beginner's book January 9, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Although I appreciate Steven D. Smith's rave review of this book, I do not share his opinion. I am a student of Audiology and I bought this book for a class on auditory evoked potentials. Most audiology students do not have a background in neuroscience and biology, and this book assumes both. Actually, as of now, I cannot for the life of me figure out how the structure of this book is conducive to beginner learning. Take Chapter 2, second paragraph: "The distribution of current flow in the extracellular (extraneuronal) space is a potential field. The transmembrane ionic current flow of the cell, in the case of evoked responses the neuron, is the origin of voltage potentials that underlie AERs". For beginners? I think not. If Dr. Hall would like to make this book more accessible and less feared by students, he might want to dumb things down a bit and not assume that we know quite as much. Dr. Hall writes that the anatomy and physiology of the auditory system is too complex to describe in this book, but then proceeds to assume that we somehow understand all of these complexities anyways. Since the chapter is called Anatomy and Physiology Principles of Auditory Evoked Responses, I guess I would expect a bit more than a disclaimer followed by assumptions of vast amounts of knowledge. To complete the contrasts of this chapter, the author has included a picture of the outer, middle, and inner ear with labels (that are too small to read, by the way). Let's just say, that if we are Au.D. students in an AER course, Dr. Hall can safely assume, that we at least know this!
My suggestion for Dr. Hall is that he recruit a group of Audiology students and clinicians to proof-read his book. There is no doubt that this book is full of useful and intricate information. I just wish it was more accessible to the group of people who are most likely to read it. Heck, if he's interested, I'd even help him! AER's are a difficult topic that requires all Audiology students to think within a completely different set of parameters. Let's start from the top, rather than the middle. Durrant's articles helped me substantially more to understand these concepts.
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