Principles Of Neural Development

Development of the Nervous System, Second Edition has been thoroughly revised and updated since the publication of the First Edition. It presents a broad outline of neural development principles as exemplified by key experiments and observations from past and recent times. The text is organized along a development pathway from the induction of the neural primordium to the emergence of behavior. It covers all the major topics including the patterning and growth of the nervous system, neuronal determination, axonal navigation and targeting, synapse formation and plasticity, and neuronal survival and death. This new text reflects the complete modernization of the field achieved through the use of model organisms and the intensive application of molecular and genetic approaches. The original, artist-rendered drawings from the First Edition have all been redone and colorized to so that the entire text is in full color. This new edition is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate level students in courses such as Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Developmental Biology. Updates information including all the new developments made in the field since the first edition Now in full color throughout, with the original, artist-rendered drawings from the first edition completely redone, revised, colorized, and updated

This volume contains summaries of most of the invited presentations at the NATO Advanced Study Institute "Organizing Principles of Neural Development", held in Povoa de Varzim, Portugal, from June 1-12, 1982. The meeting was intended to bring together a select group of investigators to present their views on problems in the field and to foster extensive discussions in smaller groups. It was hoped that such communications would pique curiousity and creativity among the students and thus help in formulating additional hypotheses regarding the type of interactions which might underlie neural development. Despite the wide range of material covered at this institute, a common theme seemed to emerge: at all stages of their develop mental history, the cells of the nervous system interact with previously generated cells (both neurons and non-neurons) as well as with other constituents of the developmental milieu. The pre sentations at this meeting helped in comprehending how a relatively "simple" series of sequential events might provide the necessary information needed to generate the diversity, characteristic of the adult nervous system, without hypothesizing on the existence of specific genes acting to control each step.

The development of a brain from its simple beginnings in the embryo to the extraordinarily complex fully-functional adult structure is a truly remarkable process. Understanding how it occurs remains a formidable challenge despite enormous advances over the last century and current intense world-wide scientific research. A greater knowledge of how nervous systems construct themselves will bring huge benefits for human health and future technologies. Unravelling the mechanisms that lead to the development of healthy brains should help scientists tackle currently incurable diseases of the nervous system such as autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia (to name but a few), discover more about the processes that cause the uncontrolled growth associated with cancer and develop possible treatments. Building Brains provides a highly visual and readily accessible introduction to the main events that occur during neural development and the mechanisms by which they occur. Aimed at undergraduate students and postgraduates new to the field, who may not have a background in neuroscience and/or molecular genetics, it explains how cells in the early embryo first become neural, how their proliferation is controlled, what regulates the types of neural cells they become, how neurons connect to each other, how these connections are later refined under the influence of neural activity including that arising from experience, and why some neurons normally die. Key Features: A concise illustrated guide focusing on the core elements of current understanding of neural development, emphasising common principles underlying developmental mechanisms and supplemented by suggestions for further reading. Text boxes throughout provide further detail on selected major advances, issues of particular uncertainty or controversy and examples of human diseases that result from abnormal development. A balanced mammalian/non-mammalian perspective, drawing on examples from model organisms including the fruit fly, nematode worm, frog, zebrafish, chick, mouse, ferret, cat, monkey and human, and emphasising mechanisms that are conserved across species. Introduces the methods for studying neural development including genetics, transgenic technologies, advanced microscopy and computational modeling, allowing the reader to understand the main evidence underlying research advances. Student-friendly, full colour artwork reinforces important concepts; an extensive glossary and definitions in page margins help readers from different backgrounds; chapter summaries stress important points and aid revision. Associated Website includes a complete set of figures from the textbook.

Neuroscience research has exploded, with more than fifty thousand neuroscientists applying increasingly advanced methods. A mountain of new facts and mechanisms has emerged. And yet a principled framework to organize this knowledge has been missing. In this book, Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin, two leading neuroscientists, strive to fill this gap, outlining a set of organizing principles to explain the whys of neural design that allow the brain to compute so efficiently. Setting out to "reverse engineer" the brain -- disassembling it to understand it -- Sterling and Laughlin first consider why an animal should need a brain, tracing computational abilities from bacterium to protozoan to worm. They examine bigger brains and the advantages of "anticipatory regulation"; identify constraints on neural design and the need to "nanofy"; and demonstrate the routes to efficiency in an integrated molecular system, phototransduction. They show that the principles of neural design at finer scales and lower levels apply at larger scales and higher levels; describe neural wiring efficiency; and discuss learning as a principle of biological design that includes "save only what is needed." Sterling and Laughlin avoid speculation about how the brain might work and endeavor to make sense of what is already known. Their distinctive contribution is to gather a coherent set of basic rules and exemplify them across spatial and functional scales.