The Heart of the Brain: The Hypothalamus and Its Hormones

277 Pages·2018·11.01 MB·English

by  Gareth Leng

The Heart of the Brain

The Heart of the Brain
The Hypothalamus and Its Hormones
Gareth Leng
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Stone Serif by Westchester Publishing Ser vices. Printed and
bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leng, G. (Gareth), author.
Title: The heart of the brain : the hypothalamus and its hormones / Gareth Leng.
Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047175 | ISBN 9780262038058 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Hypothalamus--Popular works. | Hypothalamic hormones--
Popular works.
Classification: LCC QP383.7 .L46 2018 | DDC 573.4/59--dc23 LC record
available at https: //lccn .loc .gov /2017047175
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Arnaud, Trystan, Rhodri, and Owain, and for Nancy

Contents
Preface ix
1 Prelude 1
2 The European Brain 7
3 The Classical Neuron 13
4 Enlightenment 25
5 Far from the Madding Crowd 31
6 Pulsatile Secretion 45
7 Dendritic Secretion and Priming 57
8 The GnRH Neuron 69
9 Kisspeptin 79
10 The Bistable Neuron 87
11 Vasopressin 99
12 Numbers 109
13 Whispered Secrets and Public Announcements 115
14 Plasticity 121
15 Rhythms 133
16 Obesity 139
17 The Empty Medicine Cabinet 151
18 Appetite 161
19 The Sweet Hormone 171
20 The Hybrid Neuron 179
21 Behavior 189
22 The Evolved Brain 201
23 Redundancy and Degeneracy 211
24 The Tangled Web 217
Notes 223
Index 253

Preface
Clarity of thought distinguishes the best of scientists, and clarity of expression is par-
ticularly important in science, where fast and efficient communication underpins
collective progress. Yet it is still an apparently widespread misconception that, for a
scientific paper to be good, it must be dull, or obscure, or both. No referee or editor
has ever advised me that a paper was unsuitable because it was too clear, too fluent,
or too elegantly written.
This passage is from Style Notes, published as guidance to authors of papers
submitted to The Journal of Neuroendocrinology, the leading specialist aca-
demic journal in my field. I wrote these in 1996 while I was editor in chief,
and they have haunted me ever since as I have striven, always imperfectly, to
live up to them.
I have written several hundred articles in the scientific literature, and
every hour spent writing hides many others spent revising, and many, many
more spent reading. Every thought I have sought to express, every discovery
related, including those I would claim as my own, owes debts to many others.
Mindful of the response of a reviewer to one scientific monograph, that the
author had used references like a dog uses a lamppost—to mark rather than
to illuminate, I have kept the number of references down: most chapters
encapsulate arguments detailed more fully in review articles that I have
cited, where I have more fully (but still incompletely) acknowledged those
debts.
There can be no comprehensive acknowledgment of those debts. The
world of Science is a commonwealth, within which, by and large, knowl-
edge, expertise, and ideas flow freely. Tracing the “true” origin of any idea is
like asking of a drop of water in a river from which cloud it fell, and about
as useful.