A comprehensive resource that provides an understanding of the healthcare system and medical issues affecting the elderly, with advice on such issues as preventing injuries, medications and preventive medicine, exercise, and nursing homes.

Already the subject of considerable pre-publication discussion, this magisterial work by one of the nation's leading neuroscientists presents a radically new view of the function of the brain and nervous system. Its central idea is that the nervous system in each individual operates as a selective system resembling natural selection in evolution, but operating by different mechanisms. By providing a fundamental neural basis for categorization of the things of this world it unifies perception, action, and learning. The theory also completely revises our view of memory, which it considers to be a dynamic process of recategorization rather than a replicative store of attributes. This has deep implications for the interpretation of various psychological states from attention to dreaming. Neural Darwinism ranges over many disciplines, focusing on key problems in developmental and evolutionary biology, anatomy, physiology, ethology, and psychology. This book should therefore prove indispensable to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in these fields, to students of medicine, and to those in the social sciences concerned with the relation of behavior to biology. Beyond that, this far-ranging theory of brain function is bound to stimulate renewed discussions of such philosophical issues as the mind-body problem, the origins of knowledge, and the perceptual basis of language.

Partial table of contents: NEUROPEPTIDES AND THE STRESS RESPONSE. Brain Corticotropin Releasing Factor and Development (T. Insel, et al.). Opioids, Stress, and the Developing Brain (I. Zagon & P. McLaughlin). THE ADRENAL MEDULLA AND STRESS. Catecholamines and Stress in the Newborn (T. Slotkin & F. Seidler). Endogeneous Neuropeptides Maintain Adrenal Catecholamine Output during Stress (B. Livett, et al.). IMMUNOBIOLOGY OF STRESS. Shock Induced Immunosuppression: Naltrexone Sensitive and Insensitive Parameters (J. Cunnick, et al.). Regulation of Interleukin-2 Expression by Dexamethasone in a Mouse T Cell Line (B. Sorg, et al.). PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS. Enzymatic and Morphological Adaptation to Physical Exercise in Young Middle Aged, and Old Mice: A Model for Physical Stress (A. Reznick, et al.). Gastric Erosion Formation by Stress: Brain Stem Mechanisms (H. Weiner, et al.). STRESS AND BEHAVIOR. Information-Induced Stress in Humans (S. Breznitz). Affect Specific Retrieval from Archival Memory (H. Weingartner, et al.). Index.

Explores what use can be made of the solution of over 300 protein structures that have now been determined in atomic detail and discusses the effect of this in medicine. Perutz explains how X-ray crystallographic studies have led to new insights into disease and approaches to treatment.

The Noradrenergic Neurons examines the mechanisms that regulate the release and synthesis of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. Noradrenaline (or norepinephrine) and the physiological activity of the cells that manufacture and release it, play an important role in response to stress and the development of resistance to stress, as well as psychological mood itself. This book discusses the response of the various nonadrenergic receptor subtypes to noradrenaline, and the long-lasting changes that underlie the striking plasticity of function manifested by noradrenergic cells, which in turn are reflected in observable behavioral plasticity In recent years there has been no single book that presents an up-to-date synthesis of current knowledge on the biochemical, anatomical, and physiological aspects of this important group of brain and peripheral nervous system cells and their function in the whole behaving organism, and this book aims to fill that gap. This is informative reading for students of physiological psychology, neurochemistry, and medicine.