Neuroscience

Scientists' understanding of two central problems in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy has been greatly influenced by the work of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel: What is it to see? This relates to the machinery that underlies visual perception, How do we acquire the brain's mechanisms for vision? This is the nature-nurture question as to whether the nerve connections responsible for vision are innate or whether they develop through experience in the early life of an animal or human. This is a book about the collaboration between Hubel and Wiesel, which began in 1958, lasted until about 1982, and led to a Nobel Prize in 1981. It opens with short biographies of both men, describes the state of the field when they started, and talks about the beginnings of their collaboration. It emphasizes the importance of various mentors in their lives, especially Stephen W. Kuffler, who opened up the field by studying the cat retina in 1950, and founded the department of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where most of their work was done. The main part of the book consists of Hubel and Wiesel's most important publications. Each reprinted paper is preceded by a foreword that tells how they went about the research, what the difficulties and the pleasures were, and whether they felt a paper was important and why. Each is also followed by an afterword describing how the paper was received and what developments have occurred since its publication. The reader learns things that are often absent from typical scientific publications, including whether the work was difficult, fun, personally rewarding, exhilarating, or just plain tedious. The book ends with a summing-up of the present state of the field.

Aromatase—or estrogen, as it is commonly known—is present in the brain and has been the subject of much recent research, not only with regard to menopause and the dwindling supply of estrogen and its impact on cognition, but the role estrogen in aging and plasticity in the brain. This book provides a review of what is known about aromatase and its distribution and regulation in the brain, and its many effects on behavior. The volume covers research on mammals (from rats to monkeys), as well as work done on birds, reptiles and amphibians, and fishes. Topics range from behavioral effects (genomic) of locally produced estrogen in the brain; aromatase and sexual differentiation; rapid changes in brain aromatase as a result of environmental effects; aromatase and brain repair; the rapid effects of estrogens on behavior; rapid effect of estrogen on sensory (auditory) processing; and a concluding statement on current challenges to research.

Many neurological conditions are caused by damage to neurons and glial cells. For most of these diseases there are at present no effective treatments to minimise the extent of neuronal and glial loss, and no effective way of replacing what has been lost. This picture is rapidly changing. Developments in basic neuroscience have produced various potential therapies that can protect neurons and glia following traumatic, anoxic, infectious, and immunological damage. The old doctrine that axons cannot be made to regenerate, and dead neurons cannot be replaced, is no longer tenable, and a wide variety of reconstructive techniques for the nervous system are under development. These and other basic science discoveries will progress into clinical practice, and lead to a revolution in neurology and neurosurgery. This book describes the various conditions that lead to damage to the nervous system, and the ways in which they may be ameliorated. It covers the burgeoning science of reconstruction of the nervous system, through neuronal, glial, and stem-cell transplantation, axon regeneration, remyelination, plasticity, and pharmacological interventions. The clinical conditions to which these treatments will be applied and their assessments are described.

This is the first book about both normal development of the nervous system and how early exposure to alcohol and nicotine interferes with this development. The developing nervous system is highly dynamic and vulnerable to genetic and epigenetic factors that can be additive or synergistic. Disruption of normal brain development leads to an array of developmental disorders. One of the most common of these is mental retardation, the prime cause of which is prenatal exposure to alcohol. As chapters in this book show, alcohol has direct effects on the developing neural system and it affects genetic regulation. Another common neurotoxin is nicotine, and it is discussed in this book for three reasons: (1) the number of adolescents who smoke cigarettes is rising in some populations; (2) prenatal exposure to nicotine affects neurotransmitter systems that are critical for normal brain development and cognition; and (3) prenatal exposure to nicotine is often accompanied by prenatal exposure to alcohol. The mature brain is the culmination of an orderly sequence of basic ontogenetic processes—cell proliferation, migration, differentiation, and death. Neural stem cells and progenitors proliferate in discrete sites; then, young neurons migrate long distances to their residences where they form neural networks. During this sequence many immature cells die, presumably eliminating unsuitable or non-competitive cells. Each process is regulated by genetic and environmental factors. When this regulation goes awry, a dysmorphic and dysfunctional brain results. Though this can be tragic in clinical settings, in experimental contexts it provides keen insight into normal brain development. The book is divided into three parts. The first describes neural ontogeny in the normal brain. The second and third deal with the consequences of early exposure to alcohol and nicotine. Though there are similarities in the effects of these two toxins, there are also intriguing differences. The commonalities reflect the plasticity and resilience of the developing brain while the differences point to the targeted effects of the two toxins. Exploring these effects brings a richer appreciation of brain development.

This revised edition offers an integrated approach to brain sciences, covering the whole range of normal and abnormal brain function and the effects of drugs on the human brain. It provides a general view of how the brain functions in health and disease, and how drugs may cause disorders.

How important are biological factors, such as hormones, in shaping our sexual destinies? This book brings social developmental, biological, and clinical psychological perspectives to bear on the factors that shape our development as male or female and that cause individuals within each sex to differ from one another in sex-related behaviors. Topics covered include sexual orientation, childhood play; spatial, mathematical, and verbal abilities; nurturance, aggression, dominance, handedness, brain structure, and gender identity.

We know as architects that the ability to measure human response to environmental stimuli still requires more years of work. Neuroscience is beginning to provide us with an understanding of how the brain controls all of our bodily activities, and ultimately affects how we think, move, perceive, learn, and remember. In an address to the American Institute of Architects convention in 2003, “Rusty” Gage made the following observations that set the core premise for this book: (1) The brain controls our behavior; (2) Genes control the blueprints for the design and structure of the brain; (3) The environment can modulate the function of genes, and ultimately, the structure of the brain; (4) Changes in the environment change the brain; (5) Consequently, changes in the environment change our behavior; and (6) Therefore, architectural design can change our brain and our behavior.

In the last fifteen years, a recognizable surge in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) research and development has emerged. This emergence has sprung from a variety of factors. For one, inexpensive computer hardware and software is now available and can support the complex high-speed analyses of brain activity that is essential is BCI. Another factor is the greater understanding of the central nervous system, including the abundance of new information on the nature and functional correlates of brain signals and improved methods for recording these signals in both the short-term and long-term. And the third, and perhaps most significant factor, is the new recognition of the needs and abilities of people disabled by disorders such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophies. The severely disabled are now able to live for many years and even those with severely limited voluntary muscle control can now be given the most basic means of communication and control because of the recent advances in the technology, research, and applications of BCI.

Does the brain create the mind, or is some external entity involved? In addressing this hard problem of consciousness, we face a central human challenge: what do we really know and how do we know it? Tentative answers in this book follow from a synthesis of profound ideas, borrowed from philosophy, religion, politics, economics, neuroscience, physics, mathematics, and cosmology, the knowledge structures supporting our meager grasp of reality. This search for new links in the web of human knowledge extends in many directions: the shadows of our thought processes revealed by brain imagining, brains treated as complex adaptive systems that reveal fractal-like behavior in the brain's nested hierarchy, resonant interactions facilitating functional connections in brain tissue, probability and entropy as measures of human ignorance, fundamental limits on human knowledge, and the central role played by information in both brains and physical systems. The author discusses the possibility of deep connections between relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and consciousness; all entities involved with fundamental information barriers. This study elaborates on possible new links in this nested web of human knowledge that may tell us something new about the nature and origins of consciousness. In the end, does the brain create the mind? Or is the mind already out there?

Broca's region has been in the news ever since scientists realized that particular cognitive functions could be localized to parts of the cerebral cortex. Its discoverer, Paul Broca, was one of the first researchers to argue for a direct connection between a concrete behavior—in this case, the use of language—and a specific cortical region. Today, Broca's region is perhaps the most famous part of the human brain, and for over a century, has persisted as the focus of intense research and numerous debates. The name has even penetrated mainstream culture through popular science and the theater. Broca's region is famous for a good reason: As language is one of the most distinctive human traits, the cognitive mechanisms that support it and the tissues in which these mechanisms are housed are also quite complex, and so have the potential to reveal a lot not only about how words, phrases, sentences, and grammatical rules are instantiated in neural tissue, but also, and more broadly, about how brain function relates to behavior. Paul Broca's discoveries were an important, driving force behind the more general effort to relate complex behavior to particular parts of the cerebral cortex, which, significantly, produced the first brain maps.