Read more
Over a half million people each year suffer brain-damaging injuries and diseases -- but the outlook for their eventual recovery is far more hopeful than it was just a short while ago. In
Brain Repair, three internationally renowned neuroscientists team up to offer an intriguing and up-to-the-minute introduction to the explosive advances being made in the research, technology, and treatment of brain damage.
We learn about the theory of neuroplasticity (the key to much of neuroscience's most exciting discoveries), visit the laboratories where researchers are untangling the mystery of Parkinson's disease, and are taken on a fascinating tour of the ways in which brain structure and functioning has been understood and studied, from prehistoric times to the present.
List of contents
- 1: How the brain functions: A brief chronology of a long history
- 2: Looking into the living brain
- 3: Neuronal and synaptic plasticity: Neurons at work
- 4: Regeneration, repair and reorganization
- 5: Factors in the brain that enhance growth and repair
- 6: Age, time, and plasticity
- 7: Brain transplants as therapy for brain injuries
- 8: The pharmacology of brain injury repair
- 9: Environment, brain function and brain repair
- 10: Where do we go from here?
About the author
Donald G. Stein is Professor of Psychobiology and former Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University.
Simon Brailowsky is Professor of Neuroscience at the National University of Mexico.
Bruno Will is Professor of Behavioral neuroscience at Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France.
Summary
Here is a book that anyone interested in how the brain works will find fascinating and enjoyable. Written in a highly readable style, the book looks at how the damaged brain can be repaired and reconstructed.
The key to neuroscience's most exciting discoveries to date is the theory that is rapidly gaining adherents in the scientific community - the theory of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity stresses that cells throughout the brain can not only regenerate, but can adapt their function to assume critical roles once performed by damaged tissue. The author explains how the brain manufactures complex chemicals that foster growth in damaged brain cells, and how misguided ideas can adversely affect how physicians treat patients.
A best-selling volume in France and Spain, Brain Repair provides a vividly written, wide-ranging look at the leading edge of one of science's most exciting frontiers.
