The cerebral cortex, especially that part customarily designated "neocortex," is one of the hallmarks of mammalian evolution and reaches its greatest size, relatively speaking, and its widest structural diversity in the human brain. The evolution of this structure, as remarkable for the huge numbers of neurons that it contains as for the range of behaviors that it controls, has been of abiding interest to many generations of neuroscientists. Yet few theories of cortical evo lution have been proposed and none has stood the test of time. In particular, no theory has been successful in bridging the evolutionary gap that appears to exist between the pallium of nonmammalian vertebrates and the neocortex of mam mals. Undoubtedly this stems in large part from the rapid divergence of non mammalian and mammalian forms and the lack of contemporary species whose telencephalic wall can be seen as having transitional characteristics. The mono treme cortex, for example, is unquestionably mammalian in organization and that of no living reptile comes close to resembling it. Yet anatomists such as Ramon y Cajal, on examining the finer details of cortical structure, were struck by the similarities in neuronal form, particularly of the pyramidal cells, and their predisposition to laminar alignment shared by representatives of all vertebrate classes.

The cerebral cortex, especially that part customarily designated "neocortex," is one of the hallmarks of mammalian evolution and reaches its greatest size, relatively speaking, and its widest structural diversity in the human brain. The evolution of this structure, as remarkable for the huge numbers of neurons that it contains as for the range of behaviors that it controls, has been of abiding interest to many generations of neuroscientists. Yet few theories of cortical evo lution have been proposed and none has stood the test of time. In particular, no theory has been successful in bridging the evolutionary gap that appears to exist between the pallium of nonmammalian vertebrates and the neocortex of mam mals. Undoubtedly this stems in large part from the rapid divergence of non mammalian and mammalian forms and the lack of contemporary species whose telencephalic wall can be seen as having transitional characteristics. The mono treme cortex, for example, is unquestionably mammalian in organization and that of no living reptile comes close to resembling it. Yet anatomists such as Ramon y Cajal, on examining the finer details of cortical structure, were struck by the similarities in neuronal form, particularly of the pyramidal cells, and their predisposition to laminar alignment shared by representatives of all vertebrate classes.

Human brain imaging, connectomics, network analysis, and neuroinformatics are just some of the important current arenas in neuroscience addressed here. The book solves a fundamental problem by supplying the first global, historically documented, hierarchically organized human nervous system parts list. This defined vocabulary accurately and systematically describes every human nervous system structural feature that can be observed with current imaging methods, and provides an extendible framework for describing accurately the nervous system in all animals including invertebrates and vertebrates alike. Research for the book began in the late 1990s when the lack of a systematic vocabulary for neuroanatomy became a critical problem in developing databases and online knowledge management systems for the NIH Human Brain Project (1995-2005), which grew out of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on a National Neural Circuitry Database (1989). One outcome of this research was the publication with Mihail Bota in 2011 of a Foundational Model of Connectivity. It provides the conceptual framework for this book, which is divided into three main parts. The first consists of four chapters discussing the rationale behind the Lexicon of nervous system parts, historical trends in the evolution of neuroanatomical concepts and nomenclature, the development of hierarchical nomenclature tables, and practical notes on using the Lexicon. The second part is the Lexicon itself, with separate entries for 1,381 standard terms. Each standard term has a textual definition including the method used for identification, age, sex, and species to which it applies, and a citation to the first use of the term as so defined. Each entry also has, where appropriate, chronological lists of nonstandard terms (10,928 in all): translations, alternate spellings, earlier delineations before naming, earlier synonyms, later synonyms, and partly corresponding terms. The third part is a set of 10 hierarchical nomenclature tables of nervous system standard terms.

In recent years, the boundaries of the neurological fields have blurred, and students and scientists in all subdivisions of neuroscience now must be familiar not only with the terminology of their own specialty but also with that of the related disciplines. In response to these developments, the author has written this revised and expanded edition of her Desk Reference for Neuroanatomy (Springer-Verlag 1977), entitled Desk Reference for Neuroscience, Second Edition. The dictionary has been amplified to include terms from neurophysiology, neuropathology, and neuropharmacology, in addition to neuroanatomy. Illustrations have been added and the references and bibliographythoroughly updated. Students and scientists will find the second edition of the Desk Reference for Neuroscience an accessible and practical guide to essential terms and definitions in all branches of the neurosciences.

First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.