Handbook of Brain Microcircuits

Handbook of Brain Microcircuits comprehensively illustrates how the concept of microcircuits is emerging as one of the major organizing principles of the nervous system.

A major challenge in neuroscience is to synthesize multidisciplinary data to give insight into brain function. The organization of neurons into microcircuits has emerged as a main theme to accomplish this. The wiring diagrams for these microcircuits are increasingly serving as canonical representations that enhance understanding of the basic functional organization of a region, focus experimental and theoretical tests of its functional properties, and facilitate comparisons with other regions.

This information has been widely dispersed in the literature, which is here synthesized for over 40 regions of the vertebrate and invertebrate nervous system. In order to focus on principles, each chapter is brief, organized around 1-3 wiring diagrams of the key circuits, with several pages of text that distil the functional significance of each microcircuit.

"This outstanding volume...is essential reading for anyone participating in the exploration or following the understanding of brain circuits as an observer. The 52 chapters in this volume come from the world's leading experts on microcircuits, and it covers a wide span of topics ranging from chemotaxis in C. elegans to microcircuitry of the primate prefrontal cortex."---John H. Byrne, PhD June and Virgil Waggoner Chair and Chairman, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX

"Neural microcircuits provide fundamental units of processing....The comprehensive view offered by this book provides an essential and unique insight to all investigators engaged in the very demanding endeavor of understanding how the brain works, both concerning its diversity and its unifying concepts."--- Marina Bentivoglio, MD Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

"Neural circuits have come of age....This book...provides a series of success stories illustrating how the structure and function of neural circuits are being probed in the modern era. It will be highly valuable not only for the cognoscenti but also for inspiring a new generation to enter this flourishing field."---Prof Michael Hausser Professor of Neuroscience, Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, United Kingdom

Professor Shepherd was educated at Iowa State College and Harvard Medical School during the 1950s, and received further training at Oxford University, the National Institutes of Health, and Karolinska Institutet. He has been at the Yale University School of Medicine since 1967, and has held visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Colli??ge de France, i??cole Normale Supi??rieure, Oxford University, and Institut Pasteur. In his research he and his collaborators introduced computational modeling into studies of brain neurons, revealed a new type of neuronal interaction between dendrites, and showed how smells are represented in the brain by distinct patterns of activity. His work has led to new concepts of brain organization, including the term microcircuits to describe canonical types of neuronal interactions. He has been editor in chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology and the Journal of Neuroscience. His books include The Synaptic Organization of the Brain, Neurobiology, and Creating Modern Neuroscience: The Revolutionary 1950s. His Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine was the first to focus on the dramatic events around the classical work on the neuron in the 19th and early 20th century. The present work takes up the even more dramatic events around the work at mid-20th century that established the modern neuroscience of today.

Professor Grillner was educated at the University of Gi??teborg in Sweden. He is past Chairman if the Nobel Assemply at the Karolinska Institutet. Currently he is Director of the Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.