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Self-organizing Neural Maps: From Retina to Tectum describes the underlying processes that determine how retinal fibers self-organize into an orderly visual map. The formation of neural maps is a fundamental organizing concept in neurodevelopment that can shed light on developmental mechanisms and the functions of genes elsewhere. The book presents a summary of research in the retinotectal field with an ultimate goal of synthesizing how underlying mechanisms in neural development harmoniously come together to create life. A broad spectrum of neuroscientists and biomedical scientists with differing backgrounds and varied expertise will find this book useful.
List of contents
1. Overview and Basics of the Retinotectal Projection2. Early Work Supports, but Also Contradicts, Rigid Chemoaffinity3. The search for chemoaffinity molecules - verification of molecular gradients4. Plasticity after surgical ablations shows the limits of chemoaffinity5. Natural Plasticity - Analysis of the effects of divergent retinal and tectal growth on the projection6. Specification and developmental genetics of Eph/ephrin gradients7. Growth of retinal axons along the visual pathway8. Genetic Analysis of the molecular gradients defining map formation9. Activity mechanisms shape central retinal projections10. Activity: Molecular signaling to growth mechanisms
About the author
Dr. Schmidt is Professor Emeritus at the University of Albany (SUNY) in the Department of Biological Sciences. He has worked in the retinotectal area since the early 1970s and published more than 60 articles and chapters. For the last four decades, he was Professor of Biological Sciences at SUNY-Albany, serving for 25 years as the Director of the Center for Neuroscience Research. In the 1990s, he together with Professor Jonathan Wolpaw organized an international conference on the wider subject and edited a volume of the proceedings for the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled Activity-Driven CNS Changes in Learning and Development (Volume 627). This volume was the NY Academy’s bestselling issue of all time.
