Edward M. Stricker - Böcker

Volume 14 is an updated version of Volume 10 in the Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology series. This time, Edward Stricker is joined by co-editor Stephen Woods, whose psychiatry affiliation balances Dr. Stricker's more physiological approach. Volume 14 provides the reader with a wide variety of perspectives on the enormous changes that have occurred in the study of food and fluid intake since the first edition of Neurobiology of Food and Fluid Intake published 14 years ago. As with the first edition, multiple viewpoints on issues of clinical significance and basic studies using laboratory animals are revealed, as world renowned experts in the field discuss homeostasis in various areas of alimentary behaviour and brain function. The text details the integration of the biological and behavioral contributions to homeostasis and the way in which basic neuroscientific studies of animal subjects can be used to illuminate parallel clinical phenomena in human subjects. Four retrospective essays on how the field has developed have been added to this new edition, and all chapters have been updated to integrate new material.New chapters in Volume 14 include motivation, food intake, body fluids, and an entirely new section on Reward, an important topic to cover in any study of motivated behaviour. Volume 14 of Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology will be a valuable addition to the libraries of those interested in the study of neurosciences, nutrition, physiology, behavioral medicine, psychiatry, and neuroendocrinology.

When I began graduate school in 1961, Physiological Psychology was alive with adventure and opportunity. It seemed possible, indeed easy, to determine which part of the brain influenced which aspect of behavior, and the relative absence of technical hurdles encouraged neophytes into the laboratory. New theories of brain function based on a wealth of reliable and provocative findings also stimu­ lated further laboratory investigation. And the results obtained in studies of food and fluid ingestion certainly were exciting, albeit perplexing. For example, eating could be stimulated by injecting one chemical agent into the rat brain, whereas drinking was stimulated by i~ecting a different chemical through the same hypothalamic cannula. After focal brain lesions rats would overeat but not work harder to obtain food. After other brain lesions in adjacent sites, rats would stop eating and drinking altogether, but ingestive behaviors would return gradu­ ally over a period of weeks or months despite permanent brain injury. Although some of these observations and related findings may provide less insight into the central control of ingestive behavior than had been believed initially, there was a strong impression then that much more was known about eating and drinking than other behaviors, and they became models of motivated activities in addition to being of interest in their own right. Twenty-two years ago, the American Physiological Society published the first handbook devoted exclusively to the subject of alimentary behavior.