Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide


Book Description

Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide is the first volume to be written on the neuropeptide PACAP. It covers all domains of PACAP from molecular and cellular aspects to physiological activities and promises for new therapeutic strategies. Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide is the twentieth volume published in the Endocrine Updates book series under the Series Editorship of Shlomo Melmed, MD.




Neural Plasticity and Memory


Book Description

A comprehensive, multidisciplinary review, Neural Plasticity and Memory: From Genes to Brain Imaging provides an in-depth, up-to-date analysis of the study of the neurobiology of memory. Leading specialists share their scientific experience in the field, covering a wide range of topics where molecular, genetic, behavioral, and brain imaging techniq




ADHD, Stress, and Development


Book Description

This first-of-its-kind volume revisits current findings on ADHD in terms of classic thinking on developmental neuropsychology for a more rounded concept of brain disorganization. Insights from Freud, Janet, John Hughlings Jackson, and other pioneers help identify mechanisms (e.g., the primitive reflexes) that can cause children with ADHD to be prone to cognitive dissociation when exposed to stressful environments. The authors’ model of the developing distracted brain pinpoints effects of stress on cognitive and affective functions, most notably attention and memory, and suggests situations in which stimuli may facilitate integration between brain and mind. This expanded knowledge opens out new educational possibilities for vulnerable students as well as new opportunities for therapeutic breakthroughs for children with ADHD. Included in the coverage: · Definition, diagnosis, and epidemiology of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. · Historical and recent research on ADHD. · Attentional functions, executive dysfunctions, and stress, implications for ADHD. · Neural dissolution, dissociation, and stress in ADHD. · Attention, brain-mind integration and ADHD. · Implications for education and therapy of ADHD children. ADHD, Stress, and Development ably synthesizes past and current understanding into a robust framework with implications for real-world practice. It offers practitioners and researchers new perspectives and future directions in neuropsychology, psychiatry, child and school psychology, and pediatrics.




From Neurons to Neighborhoods


Book Description

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.




Plant Performance Under Environmental Stress


Book Description

Global climate change is bound to create a number of abiotic and biotic stresses in the environment, which would affect the overall growth and productivity of plants. Like other living beings, plants have the ability to protect themselves by evolving various mechanisms against stresses, despite being sessile in nature. They manage to withstand extremes of temperature, drought, flooding, salinity, heavy metals, atmospheric pollution, toxic chemicals and a variety of living organisms, especially viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, insects and arachnids and weeds. Incidence of abiotic stresses may alter the plant-pest interactions by enhancing susceptibility of plants to pathogenic organisms. These interactions often change plant response to abiotic stresses. Plant growth regulators modulate plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, and regulate their growth and developmental cascades. A number of physiological and molecular processes that act together in a complex regulatory network, further manage these responses. Crosstalk between autophagy and hormones also occurs to develop tolerance in plants towards multiple abiotic stresses. Similarly, biostimulants, in combination with correct agronomic practices, have shown beneficial effects on plant metabolism due to the hormonal activity that stimulates different metabolic pathways. At the same time, they reduce the use of agrochemicals and impart tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress. Further, the use of bio- and nano-fertilizers seem to hold promise to improve the nutrient use efficiency and hence the plant yield under stressful environments. It has also been shown that the seed priming agents impart stress tolerance. Additionally, tolerance or resistance to stress may also be induced by using specific chemical compounds such as polyamines, proline, glycine betaine, hydrogen sulfide, silicon, β-aminobutyric acid, γ-aminobutyric acid and so on. This book discusses the advances in plant performance under stressful conditions. It should be very useful to graduate students, researchers, and scientists in the fields of botanical science, crop science, agriculture, horticulture, ecological and environmental science.




The Upside of Stress


Book Description

Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits. You hear it all the time: stress causes heart disease; stress causes insomnia; stress is bad for you! But what if changing how you think about stress could make you happier, healthier, and better able to reach your goals? Combining exciting new research on resilience and mindset, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, proves that undergoing stress is not bad for you; it is undergoing stress while believing that stress is bad for you that makes it harmful. In fact, stress has many benefits, from giving us greater focus and energy, to strengthening our personal relationships. McGonigal shows readers how to cultivate a mindset that embraces stress, and activate the brain's natural ability to learn from challenging experiences. Both practical and life-changing, The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a toolkit for getting better at it—by understanding, accepting, and leveraging it to your advantage.




The Development of Coping


Book Description

This book traces the development of coping from birth to emerging adulthood by building a conceptual and empirical bridge between coping and the development of regulation and resilience. It offers a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing the developmental study of coping, including the history of the concept, critiques of current coping theories and research, and reviews of age differences and changes in coping during childhood and adolescence. It integrates multiple strands of cutting-edge theory and research, including work on the development of stress neurophysiology, attachment, emotion regulation, and executive functions. In addition, chapters track how coping develops, starting from birth and following its progress across multiple qualitative shifts during childhood and adolescence. The book identifies factors that shape the development of coping, focusing on the effects of underlying neurobiological changes, social relationships, and stressful experiences. Qualitative shifts are emphasized and explanatory factors highlight multiple entry points for the diagnosis of problems and implementation of remedial and preventive interventions. Topics featured in this text include: Developmental conceptualizations of coping, such as action regulation under stress. Neurophysiological developments that underlie age-related shifts in coping. How coping is shaped by early adversity, temperament, and attachment. How parenting and family factors affect the development of coping. The role of coping in the development of psychopathology and resilience. The Development of Coping is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians and related professionals in developmental, clinical child, and school psychology, public health, counseling, personality and social psychology, and neurophysiological psychology as well as prevention and intervention science.




Plant Adaptation Strategies in Changing Environment


Book Description

This book addresses the crucial aspects of plant adaptation strategies in higher as well as lower plant groups. Stress induced by changing environmental conditions disrupts or alter various physiological and metabolic processes in organisms, however, plants have evolved various defence strategies to cope with external perturbations. The book discusses speciation changes in response to extreme ecological conditions such as cold, heat, aridity, salinity, altitude, incidental UV radiation and high light intensity, which are particularly relevant in the current scenario of global warming. It also explores the effects of human activities and emission of phytotoxic gases. Further, it describes the overall adaptation strategies and the multifaceted mechanisms involved (integrated complex mechanism), ranging from morphological to molecular alterations, focusing on plants’ capabilities to create an inner environment to survive the altered or extreme conditions. This book is a valuable tool for graduate and research students, as well as for anyone working on or interested in adaptation strategies in plants.




Plant Metabolites and Regulation under Environmental Stress


Book Description

Plant Metabolites and Regulation Under Environmental Stress presents the latest research on both primary and secondary metabolites. The book sheds light on the metabolic pathways of primary and secondary metabolites, the role of these metabolites in plants, and the environmental impact on the regulation of these metabolites. Users will find a comprehensive, practical reference that aids researchers in their understanding of the role of plant metabolites in stress tolerance. - Highlights new advances in the understanding of plant metabolism - Features 17 protocols and methods for analysis of important plant secondary metabolites - Includes sections on environmental adaptations and plant metabolites, plant metabolites and breeding, plant microbiome and metabolites, and plant metabolism under non-stress conditions




Individual Development and Evolution


Book Description

This work is intended to portray the interrelationship of heredity, individual development, and the evolution of species in a way that can be understood by nonspecialists. In striving to offer a straightforward historical exposition of the complex topic of nature and nurture, the author tells the story through a central cast of characters beginning with Lamarck in 1809 and ending with a synthesis of his own that depicts how extragenetic behavioral changes in individual development could be the first stages in the pathway leading to evolutionary change. On the way to that goal, he describes relevant conceptual aspects of genetics, embryological development, and evolutionary biology in a nontechnical and accurate way for students and colleagues in the behavioral and social sciences. The book presents a highly selected review as a prelude to the description of a developmental theory of the phenotype in which behavioral change leads eventually to evolutionary change. This book grew out of an invited interdisciplinary course of lectures for advanced undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Presenting the various ways about thinking about heredity, individual development, and evolution, the author had three goals in mind: *to establish the relevance of individual development to the evolution of species; *to describe the most appropriate way to think about or conceptualize heredity in relation to individual development; *to show that this somewhat unorthodox manner of conceptualizing heredity and individual development gives rise to a new way to think about the behavioral pathway leading to evolution. In conclusion, the present work will provide a contribution toward the possible dissolution of the nature-nurture dichotomy, as well as a contribution to evolutionary theory.