The Hippocampus In Clinical Neuroscience

The hippocampus is one of the most intriguing structures of the human brain. Damage to this part causes symptoms ranging from transient disorders accompanied by tiny lesions to severely debilitating cognitive disorders with marked tissue loss. This publication provides a predominantly clinical approach to the complex workings of the hippocampus from different perspectives, ranging from basic principles to specific diseases. The first part of the book summarizes current knowledge regarding the structure and physiology of the hippocampus and establishes the ties to basic neuroscience. The second part deals with the function and assessment of the human hippocampus, including memory function, neuropsychological measures, and conventional and functional imaging studies. The chapters of the third part are devoted to the hippocampus in neurological disorders, e.g. the interaction between stress and memory function, and the pathological conditions of common as well as selected rare neurological diseases affecting the hippocampus. The book is highly recommended to clinical neurologists who wish to gain a broad understanding of this complex and fascinating organ in terms of basic principles, modern imaging findings, and specific diseases.

The hippocampus is one of the most studied structures in the human brain and plays a pivotal role in human memory function. Its recognized function is reflected by the presence of an extensive body of neurophysiological, neuropsychological, anatomical and neurocomputational literature that presents basic mechanisms, theoretical models and psychological concepts. However, in the rapidly growing field of hippocampal research, the clinical aspects of diseases that affect the hippocampus are greatly under-represented in current literature, and clinical approaches and concepts are scattered throughout various clinical and basic scientific disciplines. The Clinical Neurobiology of the Hippocampus explores clinical approaches to the range of diseases that affect the hippocampus. It brings together and reviews the common methods, clinical findings, concepts, mechanisms and, where applicable, therapeutic strategies for these clinical approaches. The clinical spectrum of hippocampal dysfunction encompasses a wide range of neurological, behavioural and psychiatric symptoms and surpasses the ability to encode, store and retrieve information. The relevance of hippocampal involvement in clinical diseases goes beyond mere neuropsychological deficits and includes psychopathological states in various conditions, such as acute amnesic syndromes, Alzheimer's disease, temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), sleep, stroke medicine, limbic encephalitis, neurodevelopmental disorders, stress- and trauma-related disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. The first part of the book covers the basic and integrative features of the hippocampus, such as the anatomy and imaging of this structure, and the basic mechanisms of hippocampal function, including the principles of hippocampus-dependent memory processing in amnesia and sleep, the mechanisms of vulnerability and adult neurogenesis as well as the effects of stress. The second part covers the various clinical manifestations in which the hippocampus is involved and in which the preceding basic mechanisms are reflected. Bringing together a broad team of experts on the basic and clinical aspects of the hippocampus, the book provides an integrative view of the hippocampus. It is invaluable for neurologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists, and will stimulate interdisciplinary discussions in clinical neuroscience.

Research in neuroscience is revolutionizing how we think about psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Psychiatric disorders reflect dysfunction of the human mind and involve changes in cognition, emotion, and motivation. Understanding how the neural networks that underlie these mental functions become dysfunctional holds great promise for devising innovative approaches to diagnosis and treatment. Scientific progress is being driven, in part, by advances in human functional neuroimaging, which is being used to characterize the activity of specific brain circuits at rest and during the performance of specific tasks. Moreover, advances in clinical neuroscience are being coupled with expanding knowledge about genetics and cellular and synaptic neuroscience. Taken together, these advancements offer the hope of much more mechanism-based approaches to treatment in the future. Better understanding of neural circuits also can provide the basis for innovative psychotherapeutic strategies that take advantage of brain plasticity for purposes of neurorehabilitation. In this book, we examine recent developments in the field of network neuroscience and their potential impact on clinical psychiatry, including the way that psychiatrists are trained and interact with other medical specialties and mental health professionals.

The hippocampus has long been considered a critical substrate in the neurobiology, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience of memory. Over the past few decades, a number of ground-breaking theoretical and methodological advances have radically enhanced our understanding of the structure and function of the hippocampus and revolutionized the neuroscientific study of memory. Cutting across disciplines and approaches, these advances offer novel insights into the molecular and cellular structure and physiology of the hippocampus, the role of hippocampus in the formation, (re)consolidation, enhancement, and retrieval of memory across time and development, and permit investigators to address questions about how the hippocampus interacts, functionally and anatomically, with other neural systems in service of memory. In addition, recent investigations also suggest that the mechanistic properties and functional processing features of the hippocampus permit broader contributions to cognition, beyond memory, to the domains of attention, decision-making, language, social cognition, and a variety of other capacities that are critical for flexible cognition and behavior. These advances have profound implications for the neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience of hippocampus dependent cognition and for the numerous psychiatric and neurological diseases and disorders for which hippocampal pathology is a hallmark such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. The goal of this book is to bring together in a single source an integrated review of these advances providing state of the art treatment on the structure and function of the hippocampus. Contributors will examine the hippocampus from a variety of levels (from cells to systems) using a wide range of methods (from neurobiological approaches in non-human animals to neuroimaging and neuropsychological work in humans).

These books are the result of a conviction held by the editors, authors, and publisher that the time is appropriate for assembling in one place information about functions of the hippocampus derived from many varied lines of research. Because of the explosion of research into the anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and behavioral aspects of the hip pocampus, some means of synthesis of the results from these lines of research was called for. We first thought of a conference. In fact, officials in the National Institute of Mental Health suggested we organize such a conference on the hippocampus, but after a few tentative steps in this direction, interest at the federallevel waned, probably due to the decreases in federal support for research in the basic health sciences so keenly feit in recent years. However, the editors also had co me to the view that conferences are mainly valuabIe to the participants. The broad range of students (of all ages) of brain behavior relations do not profit from conference proceedings unless the proceedings are subsequently published. Furthermore, conferences dealing with the functional character of organ systems approached from many points of view are most successful after participants have become acquainted with each other's work. Therefore, we believe that a book is the best format for disseminating information, and that its publication can be the stimulus for many future conferences.

Integrating neurobiological mechanisms of general health into the coverage of mental disorders, this text also looks at other aspects of neuroscience and the ways in which it impacts on the mental condition.

These books are the result of a conviction held by the editors, authors, and publisher that the time is appropriate for assembling in one place information about functions of the hippocampus derived from many varied lines of research. Because of the explosion of research into the anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and behavioral aspects of the hip pocampus, some means of synthesis of the results from these lines of research was called for. We first thought of a conference. In fact, officials in the National Institute of Mental Health suggested we organize such a conference on the hippocampus, but after a few tentative steps in this direction, interest at the federal level waned, probably due to the decreases in federal support for research in the basic health sciences so keenly felt in recent years. However, the editors also had come to the view that conferences are mainly valuable to the participants. The broad range of students (of all ages) of brain behavior relations do not profit from conference proceedings unless the proceedings are subsequently published. Furthermore, conferences dealing with the functional character of organ systems approached from many points of view are most successful after participants have become acquainted with each other's work. Therefore, we believe that a book is the best format for disseminating information, and that its publication can be the stimulus for many future conferences.

Basic Clinical Neuroscience offers medical and other health professions students a clinically oriented description of human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. This text provides the anatomic and pathophysiologic basis for understanding neurologic abnormalities through concise descriptions of functional systems with an emphasis on medically important structures and clinically important pathways. It emphasizes the localization of specific anatomic structures and pathways with neurological deficits, using anatomy enhancing 3-D illustrations. Basic Clinical Neuroscience also includes boxed clinical information throughout the text, a key term glossary section, and review questions at the end of each chapter, making this book comprehensive enough to be an excellent Board Exam preparation resource in addition to a great professional training textbook. The fully searchable text will be available online at thePoint.