'The Orbitofrontal Cortex' explores a part of the brain that is important in human emotion, pleasure, decision-making, valuation, and personality. In ten chapters the book describes: · The OFC's connections; · Its neuron level neurophysiology which is essential for understanding what information is represented in the orbitofrontal cortex; · Functional neuroimaging of the orbitofrontal cortex; · How it relates to the previous and succeeding areas in brain processing; · The effects of damage to the orbitofrontal cortex which provides important evidence about its functions; · How the orbitofrontal cortex is involved in psychiatric disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, and autism; · How and what the orbitofrontal cortex computes; · Future directions in understanding the functions of the orbitofrontal cortex in health and disease. The book is unique in providing a coherent multidisciplinary approach to understanding the functions of one of the most interesting regions of the human brain, in both health and in disease, including depression. The Orbitofrontal Cortex will be valuable for those in the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychology, psychiatry, biology, animal behaviour, economics, and philosophy, from the undergraduate level upwards.

The Orbitofronal Cortex plays a critical role in emotion, smell, and personality. This is the definitive volume on a brain region hitherto neglected in the neurosciences literature. It brings together world leaders in neuroscience to provide a comprehensive, integrative account of this region--one that will be the standard source for years to come.

Keynote address: Revaluing the orbital prefrontal cortex / R.J. Dolan -- Specialized elements of orbitofrontal cortex in primates / H. Barbas -- The orbitofrontal cortex: Novelty, deviation from expectation, and memory / M. Petrides -- Definition of the orbital cortex in relation to specific connections with limbic and visceral structures and other cortical regions / J.L. Price -- Role of orbitofrontal cortex connections in emotion / N.L. Rempel-Clower -- Perspectives on olfactory processing, conscious perception, and orbitofrontal cortex / G.M. Shepherd -- What can an orbitofrontal cortex-endowed animal do with smells? / J.A. Gottfried -- Taste in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of the macaque / T.C. Pritchard, G.J. Schwartz, T.R. Scott. -- The role of the human orbitofrontal cortex in taste and flavor processing / D.M. Small ... [et al.] -- The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in sensory-specific encoding of associations in Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning / A.R. Delamater -- The contribution of orbitofrontal cortex to action selection / S.B. Ostlund, B.W. Balleine -- Neural encoding in the orbitofrontal cortex related to goal-directed behavior / T. Furuyashiki, M. Gallagher -- Interactions between the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampal memory system during the storage of long-term memory / S.J. Ramus ... [et al.] -- Orbitofrontal cortex and the computation of economic value / C. Padoa-Schioppa -- Lights, camembert, action! The role of human orbitofrontal cortex in encoding stimuli, rewards, and choices / J.P. O'Doherty -- Orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala contributions to affect and action in primates / E.A. Murray, A. Izquierdo -- Synergistic and regulatory effects of orbitofrontal cortex on amygdala-dependent appetitive behavior / A.C. Roberts, K. Reekie, K. Braesicle -- Reconciling the roles of orbitofrontal cortex in reversal learning and the encoding of outcome expectancies / G. Schoenbaum ... [et al.] -- Flexible neural representations of value in the primate brain / C.D. Salzman ... [et al.] -- The contribution of the medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsomedial striatum to behavioral flexibility / M.E. Ragozzino -- A comparison of reward-contingent neuronal activity in monkey orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum. Guiding actions toward rewards / J.M. Simmons ... [et al.] -- Orbital versus dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Anatomical insights into content versus process differentiation models of the prefrontal cortex / D.H. Zald -- Difficulty overcoming learned non-reward during reversal learning in rats with ibotenic acid lesions of orbital prefrontal cortex / D.S. Tait, V.J. Brown -- The role of orbitofrontal cortex in decision making. A component process account / L.K. Fellows -- Neuronal activity related to anticipated reward in frontal cortex. Does it represent value or reflect motivation? / M.R. Roesch, C.R. Olson -- Neuronal mechanisms in prefrontal cortex underlying adaptive choice behavior / J.D. Wallis -- Dysfunctions of medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex in psychopathy / R.J.R. Blair -- The orbitofrontal cortex, real-world decision making, and normal aging / N.L. Denburg ... [et al.] -- Orbitofrontal cortex function and structure in depression / W.C. Drevets -- Symptoms of frontotemporal dementia provide insights into orbitofrontal cortex function and social behavior / I.V. Viskontas, K.L. Possin, B.L. Miller -- The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in anxiety disorders / M.R. Milad, S.L. Rauch -- Vulnerability of the orbitofrontal cortex to age-associated structural and functional brain changes / S.M. Resnick ... [et al.] -- The orbital prefrontal cortex and drug addiction in laboratory animals and humans / B.J. Everitt ... [et al.] -- Neural correlates of inflexible behavior in the orbitofrontal-amygdalar circuit after cocaine exposure / T.A. Stalnaker ... [et al.] -- Orbitofrontal cortex and cognitive-motivational impairments in psychostimulant addiction. Evidence from experiments in the non-human primate / P. Olausson ... [et al.] -- The orbitofrontal cortex, impulsivity, and addiction. Probing orbitofrontal dysfunction at the neural, neurochemical, and molecular level / C.A. Winstanley.

Each issue of Transactions B is devoted to a specific area of the biological sciences, including clinical science. All papers are peer reviewed and edited to the highest standards. Published on the 29th of each month, Transactions B is essential reading for all biologists.

This second volume of "Brain-Inspired IT Series" includes five invited papers and 59 selected technical papers from the Second International Symposium "BrainIT 2005" which was held on in Kitakyushu, Japan, on October 7-9, 2005. The First International Symposium BrainIT 2004 was a great success, and provided the participants with good opportunities to exchange valuable information and various ideas from multidisciplinary research areas. A survey was made of the current state-of-the-art and the possibility to establish new research fields in the Brain-Inspired Information Technology was explored. In this second volume, it can be found that the seeds of BrainIT 2004 are growing and about to bloom as collaboration reaches among a wide variety of areas from biology to robotics. In the symposium BrainIT 2005, special sessions on "Decision and Behavioral Choice Organized by Natural and Artificial Brains" were provided besides technical sessions in a wide range of fields from Brain Science to Information Technology as well as the previous symposium. The first five invited papers are contributed by outstanding researchers in the area, and were presented in special sessions to discuss how the brain recognizes outer and inner worlds and organizes behavior expression, decision making and behavioral selection. The technical papers cover vision and sensory systems, cognition and languages, learning and memory, behavior and emotion, motor controls, dynamics, neural computation, neural networks, and brain-inspired intelligent machines, etc. It is hoped that this Brain-Inspired IT series will be a key milestone for researchers and students to pioneer the new field "Brain-Inspired Information Technology".

The Brain and Emotion provides a modern neuroscience-based approach to information processing in the brain, and deals especially with the information processing involved in emotion, motivation, and reward. It uncovers many fundamental principles about how the brain works and about brain design through evolution by natural selection. It will be a key text for researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, medicine, biology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. It will also be of interest to all those concerned with and fascinated by the wider issues of what emotions are, why we have emotions and pleasure, and why emotions may not always appear to be adaptive in humans.

Emotions are a loaded topic. From love and hate to grief, fear and envy, emotions are increasingly understood as driving forces in social life. The Emotions: A Cultural Reader applies a cross-cultural perspective on emotions. It examines the fact that emotions are socially and culturally constructed, while highlighting problems of comparison and translation of local terms and emotional experiences. Are emotions cultural or universal? To what extent are there culturally distinct emotions? The Emotions closes the traditional Western gap where emotions are separated from rationality and thought: the heart versus mind debate. By presenting both classic essays and new cutting-edge chapters from anthropology, sociology and psychology with important contributions from philosophy and neuroscience, the volume connects a rich range of cross-cultural studies to form a thriving interdisciplinary debate on emotions.

The 1990s, appropriately termed "the decade of the brain," witnessed unprecedented advances in our knowledge of psychiatric neuroscience. Yet with every advance, we realized afresh that we were still in the beginning stages of a much longer journey. This text chronicles the next step of that journey. Structured around a proven teaching methodology that uniquely integrates the clinical aspects of psychiatric disorders with their neurobiology, this volume begins with two introductory chapters on functional neural circuitry and neural signaling pathways. The remaining six chapters present current knowledge on the neuroanatomic and neurochemical mechanisms underlying schizophrenia, addiction, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and dementia/Alzheimer's disease. For clarity and consistency, each chapter features the same four divisions -- clinical presentation, neural circuitry, signaling pathways, and psychopharmacology -- as they relate to * Schizophrenia, which reviews studies of the neural basis of schizophrenia and describes how the cortex, the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the medial temporal lobe work together during normal brain function and then how each is perturbed in psychosis. * Addiction, which focuses on the consequences of psychoactive substance use, including compulsive practices (e.g., eating, sex, Internet browsing) that might also involve the same brain circuits and signaling pathways. Of exceptional value are two unique illustrations that capture -- for the first time -- much of what we know about the anatomy and neurochemistry underlying the behavioral symptoms of addiction. * Anxiety, which presents current hypotheses regarding neurocircuitry and signaling pathways for the three best-studied (from a neurobiologic perspective) anxiety disorders: panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. * Depression, which offers evidence for the involvement of highly interconnected cortical and limbic structures such as the prefrontal cortex, medial thalamus, amygdala, ventral striatum, hippocampus, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in unipolar major depression, and suggests target areas (such as the cAMP pathway) for study in the development of new antidepressants. * Bipolar disorder, which shows that specific abnormalities in signal transduction pathways, including protein kinase activity, G protein levels, and gene expression, are unique to bipolar patients, concluding that the actions of lithium and anticonvulsants on intracellular signaling pathways provide a new paradigm for novel pharmacological interventions. * Dementia and Alzheimer's disease, which details current findings on neurofibrillary degeneration, relevant genes and proteins, pathogenesis (metabolic decline, defective cell repair, and Aß toxicity), and treatment strategies (neurotransmitter replacement, and neuroprotective and regenerative approaches). Discusses frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson's disease, and vascular dementia. Meticulously researched and clearly written by 15 contributors -- all recognized experts from leading research and teaching institutions in the United States -- this compact and extensively illustrated volume stands out in the literature because it combines readability and practicality with the breadth and depth typically found only in far lengthier works. Psychiatric practitioners, residents, and students alike will welcome this informative, easy-to-read text, which will also be of special interest to mental health and pharmaceutical industry professionals, and of general interest to anyone who wants to know more about the biology of psychiatric illness.