Spiders are wonderful creatures. Their varied and complex range of behavior and highly developed sensory systems are excellently adapted to the environmental conditions - as is proven by their evolutionary success. Over 400 million years, spiders have developed their sensory organs to a fascinating technical perfection and complexity. In his intriguing book, Professor Friedrich G. Barth puts this technical perfection into the context of "biology", in which the interaction between environment and sensory organs and the selectivity of the senses as a link between environment and behavior play a major role.
Textbook in neuroscience used in teaching undergraduate as well as graduate students for eduction in specialized fields of medicine. A source of information for researchers in neuroscience, psychology, audiology etc.
Synthesizing coverage of sensation and reward into a comprehensive systems overview, Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward presents a cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach to the interplay of sensory and reward processing in the brain. While over the past 70 years these areas have drifted apart, this book makes a case for reuniting sensation a
In a recent book Arthur Koestler describes very cynically the superfluity of scientific meetings. He lists the various gatherings that are going to take place in one brief summer season in the Kon gresshaus of a small Swiss village, ending the long list with three interdisciplinary symposia, titles of which contain the three words "Environment", "Pollution", and "Future" in three different permu tations. By the same token, Koestler could list endlessly meetings on sensory physiology and behaviour or their synonyms, which have taken place allover the world on the national or international level in recent years. The organizing committee of the Oholo conferences was very well aware of this situation when the topic for the 19th Conference was selected. However this field is relatively new in Israel - only in the last decade were several teams established in this country to carry out combined studies on sensory physiology and behaviour. They attracted ever-increasing numbers of students of zoology, phy siology, medicine and psychology. The committee thought that the time was ripe to bring the Israeli students and scientists together with noted investigators from allover the world, to discuss and analyse the state of the art. The Conference dealt with processing of information obtained through the various senses: visual, auditory, tactile, as well as the olfactory and gastatory senses. More complex behavioural patterns were also analysed.
Zooplankton is a major work of reference for researchers in plankton biology, physiology and behavior, which combines behavioral and psychological approaches to the study of plankton on present and interdisciplinary investigation of sensory processes in pelagic environments. The breadth of perspective thus achieved provides valuable insights into the larger scale ecological processes of biological productivity, community structure and population dynamics. Technological advances in almost all aspects of biological research have opened up opportunities for a re-examination of the sensory ecology of planktonic organisms. In this wide-ranging collection, leading researchers in planktonic behavior and physiology address the rapidly developing interface between these two major areas. The studies presented range from the laboratory to the field and from the cell to the whole organism, but share the common goal of understanding the special sensory world of organisms that live in pelagic environments and how their behavior and physiology relate to it.
The vertebrate eye has been, and continues to be, an object of interest and of inquiry for biologists, physicists, chemists, psychologists, and others. Quite apart from its important role in the development of ophthalmology and related medical disciplines, the vertebrate eye is an exemplar of the ingenuity of living systems in adapting to the diverse and changing environments in which vertebrates have evolved. The wonder is not so much that the visual system, like other body systems, has been able to adapt in this way, but rather that these adaptations have taken such a variety of forms. In a previous volume in this series (VII/I) Eakin expressed admiration for the diversity of invertebrate photoreceptors. A comparable situation exists for the vertebrate eye as a whole and one object of this volume is to present to the reader the nature of this diversity. One result of this diversification of ocular structures and properties is that the experimental biologist has available a number of systems for study that are unique or especially favorable for the investigation of particular questions in visual science or neurobiology. This volume includes some examples of progress made by the use of such specially selected vertebrate systems. It is our hope that this comparative approach will continue to reveal new and useful preparations for the examination of important questions.
The great importance of mosquitoes lies in their role as transmitters of pathogens and parasites, and in their use as experimental animals well suited to laboratory investigations into aspects of biochemistry, physiology and behaviour. The largest part of this latest volume of The Biology of Mosquitoes concerns interactions between mosquitoes and viruses and the transmission of arboviruses to their vertebrate hosts, while the remainder concerns symbiotic interactions between mosquitoes and bacteria. The introduction provides a timely review of the first major development in mosquito taxonomy for several decades. Further chapters describe the interactions between mosquitoes and the viruses that infect them, the transmission and epidemiology of seven very important arboviruses, and the biology of bacteria that are important control agents or of great biological interest. Like the earlier volumes, Volume 3 combines recent information with earlier important findings from field and laboratory to provide the broadest coverage available on the subject.
While we may have always assumed that insects employ auditory communication, our understanding of it has been impeded by various technical challenges. In comparison to the study of an insect's visual and olfactory expression, research in the area of acoustic communication has lagged behind. Filling this void, Insect Sounds and Communication is the
Using the most well-studied behavioral analyses of animal subjects to promote a better understanding of the effects of disease and the effects of new therapeutic treatments on human cognition, Methods of Behavior Analysis in Neuroscience provides a reference manual for molecular and cellular research scientists in both academia and the pharmaceutic
Physiology: Past, Present and Future documents the proceedings of a symposium in honor of Yngve Zotterman held in the Department of Physiology, Medical School, University of Bristol on 11-12 July 1979. The idea for the symposium was spurred by the knowledge that Yngve would reach the age of 80 in September 1978 and the belief that he would welcome a meeting to celebrate his great age and achievement, in the company of some of his distinguished friends and collaborators. The symposium discussed advances in several branches of physiology. These include studies on C-fiber afferents in the viscera, skin, and deeper somatic tissues; touch and pain; tactile paths in the nervous systems of mammals; jaw reflexes evoked from the cerebral cortex; thermoreception; and temperature sensitivity of humans and monkeys. Also included are papers on taste cell transduction; how the sense of taste controls appetitive and instrumental behavior; and structural changes in the excitable membrane during excitation. The book concludes with a discussion on future trends, which begins with some challenging remarks by Yngve Zotterman. These remarks are then taken up and developed by the speakers.
