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Book Reviews
from the fact that it contains excellent accounts of the transport of amino acids into brain--and the interaction of transport across the blood brain barrier and metabolism of the amino acids. E. A. NEWSHOLME Dr Eric A. Newsholme is a lecturer at the Department of Biochemistry, University o f Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QU, England
Fundamental Neuroanatomy. W. NAUTA and M. FEIRTAG. 340 pp. + 116 Figs. Price: £39.95 hard covers, £18.95 paperback. Freeman, New York, 1986. One would have thought it almost inconceivable that a new book on neuroanatomy could be produced, especially a short one, which would better the many excellent texts already available. Not so. This book is just what most students look for: it is short, well-written, easily readable and with many clearly drawn and labelled illustrations, some of them in two colours, and some stunning photographs. It concentrates on some important concepts and on those aspects of neuroanatomy that the preclinical undergraduate needs to know. It does not dwell on details, nor is it pedantic in the way it presents the information. Rather, the text is laid out clearly, sometimes interlaced with entertaining historical snippets; it really does concentrate on teaching the subject and on initiating the student's interest in it rather than on showing off the authors' knowledge. Instead, it reflects the experience of one of the authors as editor of Scientific American in identifying what is attractive to most readers. The result is an interesting, didactic and readable book. More important, the authors assume little (rather than none, as they claim) previous knowledge on the part of the reader. It thus makes the subject accessible to students as well as to anyone who wants to find out more about the way the human nervous system is constructed. The approach is somewhat unorthodox, in that the book does not aspire to be a comprehensive list of arid facts. Imaginative, however, it is not, in that the solution is an obvious one: to remove 'unnecessary' facts and include instead a few excursions into neurophysiology, development, evolution and some clinical aspects, although occasionally these excursions seem a little half-hearted, sometimes bypassing some important concepts. I am not entirely convinced that such departures always help the reader to understand the anatomy, which is, after all, what the book is about. Nevertheless, they do help as welcome punctuation for the anatomy, and I doubt that even a moderately intelligent student would attempt to use this book as a complete text on the Neurosciences. I have only two minor quibbles about the book. First, that the index is very poor. It appears to have foresaken completeness in favour of brevity. Although conciseness is undoubtedly commendable in the text, a comprehensive index would have aided the authors in their aims. Second, I feel that the inclusion of eight lavish glossy plates of colour photographs of brain slices is an unnecessary indulgence. While these do look pretty, the colour does not add any information that could not have been conveyed equally well by black and white photographs, or even by the excellent line drawings of the photographs facing each colour plate. Inevitably, their
presence must have contributed significantly to increase the shelf price of the book, although it cannot be considered as an expensive text. In summary, buy it, and, it you are thinking of writing a textbook on anything, please, do consult it as an example. Unless you happen to work on one of the aspects that has been omitted, you'll love it. If you do work on one of these, maybe you should think about finding something more interesting to work on. CLAUDIO STERN Dr C. D. Stern is at the University of Oxford, where he is University Lecturer in Human Anatomy and Student o f Christ Church, Oxford, U.K.
The Auditory Midbrain, Structure and Function in the Central Auditory Pathway. LINDSAYA1TKIN. ISBN 0896030857. Price: £41.55. John Wiley. This book summarizes evidence, which has been accumulating at an exponential rate over the past 80 years, for the crucial role of the midbrain in the analysis of auditory signals and sound localization. In the majority of the chapters, the author describes in a fluid manner behavioral, anatomical and neurophysiological studies (with special emphasis on the tonotopic organization) of the four major midbrain auditory nuclei: the central nucleus, dorsal cortex, external nucleus and the nuclei of the lateral leminiscus. An important and recurrent theme throughout the book is that the auditory midbrain, the connecting link between the hind- and forebrain, directs auditory information into two pathways: one concerned with the perception of sound and the other with reflexive behaviors evoked by sound. Thus, the functional division into these two streams allies the auditory system to the more familiar visual system in which the perception of contours occurs at the cortical level via a pathway through the lateral geniculate nucleus while the control of visual reflexes is channeled through the superior colliculus. In addition to conveying information in a digestible fashion, the author has a flare for confronting the reader with insightful mismatches between current dogma and data. For instance, I was particularly 'teased' by the apparent mismatch between the physiological boundary (identified as a reversal in the tonotopic organization) and the cytoarchitectural boundary between the pericentral and central nucleus. Here is a counter-example of the tenet, 'function follows form,' by which brain areas of other sensory pathways abide. The book culminates in Chapter 10, where the author gives a thorough and incisive look at, what appears to be the main function of the auditory midbrain, sound localization. This chapter is certainly the highlight in that it focuses upon a major issue in neurosciences: How does the brain encode auditory space? Unlike the visual and somatosensory systems, it is not a simple point-to-point conversion of a two dimensional receptor surface onto higher-order brain areas. One mechanism exists in the midbrain of the barn owl (Tylo alba) and the elegant series of experiments by Konishi, Knudsen and coworkers leading to its discovery is described in detail. The binaural interactions resulting in the construction of a neural map of auditory space in the barn owl, a 'specialized auditory predator,' are likely the