Posts Tagged ‘Central Nervous System (CNS)’

Disorders of the Developing Nervous System

Disorders of the Developing Nervous System: Changing Views on Their Origins, Diagnoses, and Treatments

Edited by John W. Swann and Anne Messer

New York. Alan R. Liss, 1988. 269 pp.

Disorders of the Developing Nervous System: Changing Views on Their Origins, Diagnoses, and Treatments is a volume based on the proceedings of the Birth Defects Symposium XVIII, held in Albany, New York, in September 1987. The book contains thirteen chapters written by 32 individuals, and is edited by John Swann and Anne Messer of the Birth Defects Institute, New York Department of Health. A possible criticism of this book is that many of the experimental findings are published by these authors elsewhere (e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine, Neurology, and Annals of Neurology). This circumstance is often a characteristic of books derived from symposia, however, and the strength of this work lies not in the novelty of its experimental results, but rather in its broad and masterful coverage of numerous “hot” areas in neurobiology. Thus, the reader is introduced to neuroimaging techniques being employed for the diagnosis and study of neurological disorders (e.g., PET scan in the diagnosis of epilepsy, MRI changes specific to the cerebellum of autistic individuals), the role of NMD A receptors in mechanisms of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, and gene mapping and cloning in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Other disorders dealt with in this book are cerebral palsy, dyslexia, Down’s syndrome, PKU, and storage diseases.

The individual chapters are written with exceptional clarity, and are easy to follow; each contains appropriate amounts of background information to orient the reader, which is probably due to the fact that each chapter is based on a talk at the Birth Defects Symposium. Although the central themes of this volume are the developing nervous system and childhood disorders of the nervous system, several papers contain information relevant to disorders of the adult nervous system (e.g., hypoxia-ischemia, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease). This feature will undoubtedly provide the book with a larger audience. In addition, its emphasis on histopathology (especially those chapters dealing with neuroanatomic changes observed in autism), will be of interest to neuropathologists. The majority of the chapters are extremely readable and provide enough interesting information to maintain the reader’s attention, without becoming overly detailed and dry. Certain chapters tend toward the obscure, however, and their subject matter is more difficult to follow. This criticism is particularly true of the chapter entitled “Timing of cell interactions in cerebellar development.” The chapter contains a veritable maelstrom of information on cerebellar mutations in several mice strains (e.g., sg/sg, Lc). In addition, the chapter entitled “Synaptic mechanisms of focal epileptogenesis in the immature nervous system” would be more readily understood if it contained a more extensive introduction to elementary neurophysiology.

On the whole, I would recommend this book. I think it will be of interest to adult and pediatric neurologists, neuropathologists, and neurobiologists. Its strength lies in its clear presentation of the research being conducted in neurobiology today.

Vision and the Brain

Vision and the Brain: Organization of the Central Nervous System

Edited by Bernard Cohen and Ivan Bodis-Wollner

New York, Raven Press, 1990. 364 pp.

While experimenting with retinal ganglion cells of cats in 1966, Enroth-Cugell and Robson made one of the major breakthroughs of the century in vision research. They showed that these cells, capable of firing action potentials, are organized in relation to simple receptive fields on the retina centralis. This work pioneered the ongoing effort to understand how light-induced signals are graded, distributed, and processed from the retina to the thalamus to the cortex (and within the cortex), making visual function possible. Vision and the Brain: Organization of the Central Nervous System, edited by Bernard Cohen and Ivan Bodis-Wollner, attempts to bring the reader up to date on the latest research in this fascinating and dynamic field.

Vision and the Brain is volume 67 in a series published by the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease. The organization has been sponsoring a new volume about once a year since 1920. Vision and the Brain is the product of 37 authors, and contains 161 illustrations. It is drawn from the authors’ original works and compiled from eighteen papers, each complete with a set of references. The volume is supplemented with an extensive index.

Vision and the Brain reads more like a textbook than a collection of many authors’ writings. In general, each chapter provides a clear and concise overview of the topic under consideration that the non-expert can easily understand and appreciate. This overview is followed by descriptions of potential domains of research as well as a summary of the authors’ pioneering work in the field. The book begins with a thorough examination of the functional and pharmacological organization of retinal cells. Here, much attention is given to the horizontal cell and the role of dopamine as a modulator of lateral inhibition — a phenomenon that aids in the visual recognition of edges. Next, the authors discuss the different transmitters mediating systems within the lateral geniculate nucleus, thus summarizing the pre-cortical processing of visual input.

Most of the book is dedicated to describing the complex interpretation of images at the level of the cortex. A summary of the encoding of objects in their shapes, color, movement, and depth is provided in an enjoyable chapter which explains some of the rationale behind optical illusions. This material is followed by a detailed analysis of neural velocity field computation, recognition of facial expression, motion processing, and the coordination of eye movement. An interesting discussion of the use of positron emission tomography to help map visual cortex functioning is also included.

For the neurology student, this book can be an amusing and up-to-date summary of visual processing systems. For the clinician, it also sheds light on the visual disturbances associated with such conditions as Parkinson’s disease, Altzheimer’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. For the vision researcher, it serves as a convenient collection of some of the field’s pioneering work. In any case, it comes with a hefty price tag.

The Brain Atlas

The Brain Atlas: A Visual Guide to the Human Central Nervous System

Thomas A. Woolsey, Joseph Hanaway, and Mokhtar H. Gado

Fitzgerald Science, 2002. 249 pp

As a student learning neuroanatomy, one of the biggest challenges is often mastering the blood supply to any given region of the central nervous system. The most user-friendly approach to learning such information can now be found within the second edition of The Brain Atlas by Woolsey et al. from the Washington University School of Medicine. Even as one picks up the manual, the brilliant colors and easy to flip notebook style bring the atlas to life as an appealing teaching guide. For every tissue section through the brain and spinal cord, one can easily follow clearly numbered anatomical regions: from a histological photograph to a colorful representation of the vascular supply and lastly to an in situ view through a MR image. The atlas ends with an emphasis on all of the major Central Nervous System (CNS) pathways by superimposing brightly labeled pathways upon actual histological sections from the brain to the lower spinal cord levels. This “one glance reveals all” approach is not only a major time-saver, but also depicts the pathways more clearly than any other reference I have ever encountered.

The logical, multi-disciplinary progression in The Brain Atlas succeeds beautifully in integrating the anatomical, radiological, vascular, and functional aspects of neuroanatomy just as a student would be expected to know in a clinical setting. Furthermore, the clearly delineated sections make this an easy and fast reference on the wards for any student or resident. One possible improvement for future editions might be the inclusion of actual clinical syndromes as they apply to normal anatomy, vascular supply, and pathways. The Brain Atlas is clearly a valuable asset to any student, teacher, or clinician broaching the wonderful world of neuroscience.