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Stress, The Aging Brain, And The Mechanisms Of Neuron Death
Honorable Mention in the category of Biological Sciences, 1992 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.
Looking beyond the now widely recognized relationships between stress and physical illness, this accessible and engagingly written book suggests that stress and stress-related hormones can also endanger the brain. Strategies to reduce stress and methods to protect neurons from further damage are proposed, and the relevance for humans of the animal research findings are clearly delineated.
Sapolsky provides an extensive review of the recent, exciting data on glucocorticoids, the adrenal steroid hormones (hydrocortisone or cortisol in humans) that are released during stress. Excessive exposure to these hormones can damage the brain and make neurons more vulnerable to neurological insults. The findings he reports and ideas he synthesizes may have profound implications for understanding brain aging and resistance of the brain to the damaging effects of strokes, seizures, and possibly Alzheimer's disease.
In part I Sapolsky focuses on how the failure of glucocorticoid regulation and subsequent excessive secretion combine to cause a complex cascade of degeneration in the brain during aging. In part 11 he addresses the implications of glucocorticoid neurotoxicity for neurology. Each chapter includes a helpful summary of the major points discussed as well as a capsule review of information from the previous chapters.
Robert M. Sapolsky is Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. He is also Research Associate at the Institute for Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, and a MacArthur Fellow.
Looking beyond the now widely recognized relationships between stress and physical illness, this accessible and engagingly written book suggests that stress and stress-related hormones can also endanger the brain. Strategies to reduce stress and methods to protect neurons from further damage are proposed, and the relevance for humans of the animal research findings are clearly delineated.
Sapolsky provides an extensive review of the recent, exciting data on glucocorticoids, the adrenal steroid hormones (hydrocortisone or cortisol in humans) that are released during stress. Excessive exposure to these hormones can damage the brain and make neurons more vulnerable to neurological insults. The findings he reports and ideas he synthesizes may have profound implications for understanding brain aging and resistance of the brain to the damaging effects of strokes, seizures, and possibly Alzheimer's disease.
In part I Sapolsky focuses on how the failure of glucocorticoid regulation and subsequent excessive secretion combine to cause a complex cascade of degeneration in the brain during aging. In part 11 he addresses the implications of glucocorticoid neurotoxicity for neurology. Each chapter includes a helpful summary of the major points discussed as well as a capsule review of information from the previous chapters.
Robert M. Sapolsky is Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. He is also Research Associate at the Institute for Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, and a MacArthur Fellow.
441 pages, Hardcover
First published September 23, 1992
About the author
Robert M. Sapolsky
24 books5,449 followersRobert Morris Sapolsky is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is currently a professor of biology, and professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya.
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August 21, 2011
This book is what made me want to be a neuroscientist. In this book, Sapolsky describes glucocorticoid cascade hypothesis and lays it out in a way that shows how close the frontiers of science can be and how science works as a living thing, full of thoughtfulness and creativity.
It's slightly technical (one probably needs a year of biology) and portions are out of date, which makes it hard to recommend, but this book changed my life.
It's slightly technical (one probably needs a year of biology) and portions are out of date, which makes it hard to recommend, but this book changed my life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review