Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 36: Cellular Analogues of Conditioning and Neural Plasticity is a collection of paper that details the various aspects of neural plasticity from various methodological perspectives. The title covers the physiological–morphological and biochemical methods in studying neural plasticity. The coverage of the text includes topics such as neuroplasticity in the superior cervical ganglion as a consequence of long-lasting inhibition; evidence for remodeling of synaptic contacts in muscles of adult frog; and calcium and presynaptic factors in synaptic plasticity. The selection also covers the regulation of acetylcholine receptors; molecular mechanisms of sensitization and desensitization of ß-receptors connected with adenylate cyclase; and cellular and behavioral studies of learning and memory in simpler systems. The book will be of great use to neurologists, neurosurgeons, and behavioral scientists.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 1: Regulatory Functions of the CNS: Principles of Motion and Organization covers the proceedings of the 28th International Congress of Physiological Sciences, held in Budapest in 1980. This text is comprised of six parts. Before presenting the six major topics, this book first explains the principles of neural organization and the perception and action. The first part studies the mechanisms of transmission in the monosynaptic reflex pathway in the spinal cord, while the second part looks into the neural mechanisms of voluntary movements and precentral motor area. Other parts of this book present papers on motor organization, eye movements, sleep, and unitary activity of the brain. This selection will be invaluable to physiologists, students of physiology, and others interested in studying the principles of motion and organization.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 32: Contributions to Thermal Physiology is a collection of papers that details the advances in the understanding of the thermal aspects of physiology. The first part of the title presents articles about central nervous control of body temperature, while the second part covers papers about fever. Next, the selection deals with brain cooling, along with thermoregulation and sleep. The fifth part covers phylogenic aspects of temperature regulation, while the sixth part tackles acclimation. Next, the selection talks about age-related difference in temperature regulation and the peripheral effector mechanisms. The text also covers the brown adipose tissue and the relevance of exercise in regulating body temperature. The book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of medicine and biology.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 19: Gravitational Physiology covers the proceedings of the 28th International Congress of Physiological Sciences. The volume presents studies that tackle the biological concerns caused by the interactions between complex living organisms and altered gravitational field. The articles in the text are organized into parts, based on their main theme. The first part presents materials about the general problems when adapting to altered gravity system, such as physiological mechanisms of adaptation of mammals to weightlessness, and studies of biorhythms in biosatellite experiments. In the next part, the selection presents papers about metabolism and morphology that include stress metabolic aspects in space flight and the effect of spaceflight on human lymphocyte activation. The text also covers the function and structure of gravity-dependent systems, along with hypokinesia and immobilization. The book will be of great interest to health professionals involved in various space programs.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 7: Cardiovascular Physiology: Microcirculation and Capillary Exchange is a collection of papers that tackles the advances in the understanding of microcirculation and capillary exchange. The text first details the coordination of microcirculatory function with oxygen demand in skeletal muscle, and then proceeds to discussing the role of intravascular pressure in the regulation of the microcirculation. Next, the selection covers the circulatory actions of prostacyclin and thromboxane, along with the routes of transcapillary transport. The last two parts of the text deal with the lymphatic system and blood-brain barrier. The book will be of great interest to health professionals, particularly cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons.

Originally published in 1991, this title was the result of a symposium held at Harvard University. It presents some of the exciting interdisciplinary developments of the time that clarify how animals and people learn to behave adaptively in a rapidly changing environment. The contributors focus on aspects of how recognition learning, reinforcement learning, and motor learning interact to generate adaptive goal-oriented behaviours that can satisfy internal needs – an area of inquiry as important for understanding brain function as it is for designing new types of freely moving autonomous robots. Since the authors agree that a dynamic analysis of system interactions is needed to understand these challenging phenomena – and neural network models provide a natural framework for representing and analysing such interactions – all the articles either develop neural network models or provide biological constraints for guiding and testing their design.