Human Hypothalamus: Basic and Clinical Aspects, Part 1

This volume in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology (Series Editors:: Michael J. Aminoff, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, USA; François Boller, Bethesda, USA; Dick F. Swaab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is the first major account of the human hypothalamus. The human hypothalamus is an extremely complex structure and consists of a large number of very different functional units (nuclei) that are not included in the standard neuropathological investigation of the human brain. In fact, on the basis of their chemical nature, many of these functional systems have only recently been distinguished through modern neurobiological techniques. Since the finding that the hypothalamus contributes to memory and attention deficits in the dementias, that a disorder of the orexin/hypocretin system is the cause of narcolepsy, that hypothalamic hamartomas are responsible for gelastic epilepsy, that the subthalamic structure where depth electrodes are placed in parkinsonian patients is a hypothalamic structure, and that the source of cluster headache is situated in the hypothalamus, this perception of the hypothalamus as a neuroendocrine structure, of limited interest to neurologists and psychiatrists, is rapidly changing. Moreover, the hypothalamus now appears to be the basis of many signs and symptoms of disorders situated on the border between neurology and psychiatry, such as depression, eating disorders, aggression, and mental retardation. As a consequence, the hypothalamus has become a meeting point for neuroscientists, neurologists and psychiatrists, endocrinologists, and pediatricians, and as such is an important starting point for the new (third) series of the Handbook of Clinical Neurology.