Book excerpt: Basic Neuroscience Protocols: Tips, Tricks, and Pitfalls contains explanatory sections that describe the techniques and what each technique really tells the researcher on a scientific level. These explanations describe relevant controls, troubleshooting, and reaction components for some of the most widely used neuroscience protocols that remain difficult for many neuroscientists to implement successfully. Having this additional information will help researchers ensure that their experiments work the first time, and will also minimize the time spent working on a technique only to discover that the problem was them, and not their materials. - Describes techniques in very specific detail with step-by-step instructions, giving researchers in-depth understanding - Offers many details not present in other protocol books - Describes relevant controls for each technique and what those controls mean - Chapters include references (key articles, books, protocols) for additional study - Describes both the techniques and the habits necessary to get quality results, such as aseptic technique, aliquoting, and general laboratory rules