Estrogens and Brain Function

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 1-15

3. Triggering the Behavior: Sensory and Ascending Pathways

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Stimulus

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 19-30

   3. Primary Sensory Neurons

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 31-43

   4. Spinal Interneurons

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 44-56

   5. Ascending Neural Pathways

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 57-74

4. Facilitating the Behavior: Sex Hormones in the Brain

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75

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   2. Steroid Sex Hormone Binding by Cells in the Vertebrate Brain

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 77-105

   3. Hypothalamic Mechanisms

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 106-127

   4. Hypothalamic Outflow

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 128-145

   5. Midbrain Module

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 146-168

5. Executive Control over the Behavior: Descending and Motor Pathways

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 169-169

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   2. Brainstem to Spinal Cord

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 171-194

   3. Motoneurons and Response Execution

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 195-207

6. Building on this Paradigm

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 209-209

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   2. Logical and Heuristic Developments

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 211-234

   3. Summary

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 235-239

   4. Epilogue

      • Donald W. Pfaff

      Pages 240-247

7. Back Matter

   Pages 249-281

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This book brings together some of the results and ideas produced by a large number of people-colleagues and students with whom I am privileged to work in the laboratory at Rockefeller University. In terms of my personal history I see it as a confluence of creative forces­ persons from whom I have learned. I was instructed in neuroanatomy by Walle J. H. Nauta at M. I. T. , and later in a course at Harvard Medical School under the direction of Richard Sidman. At Harvard Medical School, where M. I. T. graduate students were allowed to cross register, the superb neurophysiology course was under the guiding spirit of Stephen Kuffler. Later, I benefited greatly from participating in his summer course in electrophysiological techniques at Woods Hole. Eric Kandel and his colleagues have provided us with the most exciting contemporary approach to the conceptualization and study of cellular mechanisms for behavior. Here at Rockefeller, Carl Pfaffmann and Neal Miller have been leaders in every sense of the word. Not only did they provide me with opportunities to grow to scientific maturity; they also set an example of clear thinking about mechanisms for mammalian behavior patterns. I wrote this book to show how the systematic use of increasingly detailed electrophysiological, neuroanatomical, and neuroendocrine tech­ niques can explain the mechanism for a mammalian behavioral response. The behavior in question happens to be sensitive to steroid hormones and plays a central role in reproduction.

• Brain
• Function
• Gehirn
• Hormonale Regulation
• Nervous System
• Pfaff
• Sexualhormon
• Sexualität
• Säugetiere
• brainstem
• estrogen action
• neural mechanisms
• neurons
• physiology

• The Rockefeller University, New York, USA

  Donald W. Pfaff

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