Customer Reviews

Developmental Neurobiology

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The general reader who has read other developmental references and would like more information concerning various aspects of the development of higher nervous systems, will find this reference useful. This reference is a synthesis of the neurobiological literature (indeed, the reference section occupies a third of its pages), but it is nonetheless very readable. The reference starts with neurulation and lineages of nerve cells including the neuroglia. There is then a chapter on the neural crest cells. This is followed by development of axons, dendrites and synapses, including the influence of neurotrophic factors. There is then a chapter on the development of the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex. Morphogenesis of these cortices occurs in three phases - formation and migration of various types of neurons and glia to characteristic positions; forming redundant dendrites and axons, with transient synapses; pruning of dendrites, axons and neurons themselves. The final chapter is on the development of neuronal specificity and neuronal projection maps. Even though a very large percentage of the mammalian genome is expressed exclusively in the nervous system, the genome is still not large enough to specify in detail the interconnections of the developed brain. Rather, it is more parsimonious for the genome to specify programs of histogenesis, migration and various cellular interactions. A neuronal projection map is where one set of neurons projects its axons to another set of neurons such the connections reflect the spatial order of the neurons. Neuronal projection maps are found throughout the nervous system.

Although I am just reading the first few chapters, the organization of this book has already attracted me. For example, in the section discussing about cortical neurogenesis, the authors provide a deeper point of view and the informations they provided are not seen in the general textbooks of developmental biology or developmental neuroscience. I really appreciate their efforts. In my opinion, this book will be quite useful for the researchers who are working on the development of the central nervous system.