Neuromodulation

"Traditional neuroscience texts have stressed the output of neurons, how they turn postsynaptic targets on or off, cause muscles to twitch or convert photons into electrical pulses. Neuromodulation alters that emphasis to examine how the responses of nerve cells can be modified. Because a neuron's performance can be modulated, brains of all animals exhibit the amazing capacity to learn. Presenting the best-studied examples, Kaczmarek and Levitan provide the first detailed review of those potassium and calcium channels whose functions are modulated through receptor-mediated second messenger mechanisms and that are thought to underlie many important kinds of neuronal plasticity. This book, which covers up-to-date biophysical work in both vertebrate and invertebrate neurons, will be greatly appreciated by the readership the authors wish to reach: neurophysiological biochemists and biochemical neurophysiologists interested in understanding how behavior results from the action of nerve cells."--James H. Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons