Clinical neurosurgery: proceedings of the congress of neurological surgeons, vol. 32, new york, 1984

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short section of the book contains some interesting papers concerned with psychological and biological aspects of chronic pain. The index is good. Many members of IASP will already have copies of this book. Like its predecessors the volume succeeds admirably in reflecting the main areas of interest in pain research and therapy at the time of the World Congress, and many of the reviews and papers here will continue to be useful for some time to come. Every medical and neurobiological library should have a copy. J. W. Scadding

Consultant Neurologist, Natiana~ hospitals for Nervous Diseases, London (U.K.)

Clinical Neurosurgery: Proceedings of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, Vol. 32, New York, 1984, edited by J.R. Little et al., Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, MD, 1985, 680 pp., E54.-. This volume represents the published manuscripts of the papers presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of the American Congress of Neurological Surgeons. This particular meeting was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Walter E. Dandy, who made very considerable cont~butions to neurosurge~ earlier in this century. The standard format of the publication of such meetings is to include the manuscripts of the invited presentations covering the topics which have been selected for a particular congress. At this meeting, in addition to the historical talks concerning Dr. Dandy in a historical perspective and some memories of his surgical team, the topics were cerebrovascular surgery, cerebella-pontine tumours, trigeminal neuralgia, pineal tumours, orbital tumours and hydrocephalus. A total of 32 separate chapters are included in the book. Probably those of most interest to readers of Pain will be those chapters on trigeminal neuralgia. There are 4 chapters in this section, covering the pathophysiology of pain in trigeminal neuralgia and a typical facial pain from the neuroanatomical point of view, the history of the development of treatment for trigeminal neuralgia, the choice of surgical means of treatment of trige~nal neuralgia and the management of the patient who has failed on conventional surgical treatment for trigeminal neuralgia. These chapters are written by experts in the field who have thoroughly reviewed the literature as well as presenting their own data. The chapter on the history of treatment for this condition is particularly outstanding. All 4 chapters are excellent reviews of their particular topic and it is pleasing to see that the work of Dr. Dandy, who was the first surgeon to treat trigeminal neuralgia satisfactorily by posterior fossa surgery, is celebrated in this way. The book is produced on very high quality paper with excellent illustrations and is well bound. It will find a place on the book shelves of most practising neurosur-

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geons as an up-to-date review in many fields. It can be recommended interested in pain for its specific review of trigeminal neuralgia.

to those

D.G.T. Thomas The National Hospitals for Nervous Diseases, Loncion WC1 3BG (U.K.)

Quant~t~t~ue Receptor ~utora~~og~a~hy, edited by CA. CA. Altar, Alan Liss, New York, 1986, g3.5.00.

Boast,

E.W. Snowhill

and

Quantitative receptor autoradiography has enabled for the first time visualization of the neurochemical organization of the central nervous system at a microscopic level. The wide ranging applications of this relatively new and powerful technique are effectively described in this timely book which is based on a symposium held during the 1984 Society for Neuroscience meeting. Each chapter with its own comprehensive list of references is presented by different specialist authors and a special colour section contains computer generated autoradiographs of ligand binding patterns in the CNS with the first visualization of opiate receptors in the living human brain. The opening chapter by Michael J. Kuhar provides a useful critical overview of autoradiography from the early use of cu-bungarotoxin in vivo and the development of an in vitro labelling to the sophisticated use today of positron emission tomography. This and the other chapters give an honest account of the technical limitations and the problem of inte~retation with a whole chapter dealing with the mismatch between receptor and transmitter distributions which is especially prominent with the opioids. The use of the in vitro labelling technique to profile the distribution of a variety of receptors including those for GABA/benzodiazepines, the monoamines and the excitatory amino acids in both rat and man are described. In the latter case post-mortem CNS tissues from patients with and without neurological disorders such as Huntington’s chorea and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have been examined with some interesting changes in receptor distribution being revealed, although the question of cause versus effect remains unanswered. The use of autoradiography to examine axonal transport of receptors in both the peripheral and central nervous system is reviewed and highlights differences that are apparent in the receptors at varying points in their life cycle. The final 3 chapters deal specifically with the latest developments in in vitro labelling techniques. The first describes the application of quantitative autoradiography to the study of hormone receptors and the possible influence of such hormones on other neurotrans~tter receptors; it contains intriguing data showing alterations related to stress and the aging process. The final 2 chapters detail the development of positron emission tomography as a non-invasive clinical approach to imaging neuroreceptors in the living human brain and raise the exciting possibility of determining localized variations in neuroreceptor populations under different physiologic/neuropathologic states. While containing sufficient original material to be of interest to those within the