Neurophysiologists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specialist trained in the study of the nervous system's physiology and its relationship with behavior and cognitive functions
2. An expert who investigates the biological mechanisms of neural activity, including its effects on human behavior and mental processes
3. A scientist focusing on the interactions between the nervous system's functions and their contributions to behavior and psychological phenomena

Etymology: The word is the plural of "neurophysiologist", and its parts are easy to trace. The first part, "neuro-", comes from the Ancient Greek "neûron", which meant sinew, tendon or cord, and the Greeks used it for the body's fibres in general. Its distant ancestor is a Proto-Indo-European root, but the sense that matters here is the Greek one: a neuron was originally a cord-like structure, not a nerve cell in the modern sense. The second part, "physiologist", combines the Greek "physis" (nature) with "-logia" (the study of), giving the study of how living bodies function. English joined the two into "neurophysiologist" by simple compounding, creating a specialist who studies how nerves work. Because the word is a plain combination of two established parts, it needs no story beyond that. The plural adds the regular "-s" ending to make the word refer to more than one such expert.