Experimental Neurochemistry

The second volume of the Handbook does not parallel any volume of the first edition; it is one more sign, or reflection, of the expansion of the field. By emphasizing the experimental approach, it illustrates the tools that have re cently become available for investigating the nervous system. Also, perhaps even more than other volumes, it illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of the field, requiring multidisciplinary methodology. It is now recognized that the availability of methodology is often the rate-limiting determinant of studies and that improvements or innovations in instrumentation can open up new avenues. A new improved method, although opening up new possibilities and being crucial to making advances, is only a tool whose use will determine its use fulness. If we do not recognize its possibilities, its use will be limited; if we do not recognize its limitations, it will mislead us. It is the possibilities and limitations and the results obtained that are illustrated here.

The second volume of the Handbook does not parallel any volume of the first edition; it is one more sign, or reflection, of the expansion of the field. By emphasizing the experimental approach, it illustrates the tools that have re cently become available for investigating the nervous system. Also, perhaps even more than other volumes, it illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of the field, requiring multidisciplinary methodology. It is now recognized that the availability of methodology is often the rate-limiting determinant of studies and that improvements or innovations in instrumentation can open up new avenues. A new improved method, although opening up new possibilities and being crucial to making advances, is only a tool whose use will determine its use fulness. If we do not recognize its possibilities, its use will be limited; if we do not recognize its limitations, it will mislead us. It is the possibilities and limitations and the results obtained that are illustrated here.

Anyone who has any contact with mental patients, old or young, or their families, or just visits a mental hospital or school for the retarded, is aware of the tremendous suffering caused by malfunctioning of the brain. The func tion of no other organ is so crucial for our everyday life, our proper func tioning, indeed our happiness, and no other illness causes as much anguish to patients or their families as mental illness. It is surprising and sad, therefore, how little effort has been devoted to research in this area; more so because such research is the only hope to ameliorate this suffering, or, to speak in the language of politics or economics, to decrease the enormous sums that we spend on trying to help our patients, with what is must generally be agreed are the most primitive and inadequate methods of treatment. Clearly, since functions of the brain are vital not only in illness, but in health, pathology is not the only area of concern to neurochemists, but it is an area that urgently needs neurochemical contributions. Progress in this field has been slower than in other areas of neurochemistry, and it seems that solutions in this field are very elusive. The reason for this is that the experimental approach is especially difficult in conditions specific for humans, or specific for complex behavior.

Basic Neurochemistry: Molecular, Cellular and Medical Aspects, a comprehensive text on neurochemistry, is now updated and revised in its Seventh Edition. This well-established text has been recognized worldwide as a resource for postgraduate trainees and teachers in neurology, psychiatry, and basic neuroscience, as well as for graduate and postgraduate students and instructors in the neurosciences. It is an excellent source of information on basic biochemical processes in brain function and disease for qualifying examinations and continuing medical education. Completely updated with 60% new authors and material, and entirely new chapters Over 400 fully revised figures in splendid color

The Handbook is intended to be a service to the neuroscience community, to help in finding available and useful information, to point out gaps in our knowledge, and to encourage continued studies. It represents the valuable contributions of the many authors of the chapters and the guidance of the editors and most important, it represents support for research in this discipline. Based on the rapid advances in the years since the second edition