This monograph provides a comprehensive basis for understanding the complex interactions that take place between synaptic input, cellular properties, and the oscillatory output of a neural network, especially in the maturing or developing nervous system. Emphasis is placed on drawing a parallel betw

The University of Florida has an ambitious goal: to harness the power of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni to solve some of society's most pressing problems and to become a resource for the state of Florida, the nation, and the world. In the upcoming decades, an unprecedented demographic shift will take place; the eighty-five and over population is projected to climb far higher than any other age group. To keep the current elderly population healthy and help prevent future generations from experiencing poor health outcomes, researchers are studying crucial connections between skeletal muscles and whole-body health. The University of Florida is at the forefront of this research, utilizing its nationally recognized excellence in the fields of muscle biology and exercise physiology to discover unique ways to preserve muscle health in the aging and those with diseases. Find out how the proteins within muscle can be manipulated to reduce recovery times for individuals who are bedridden. Learn how older, elite athletes have resisted the inevitable degeneration that comes with aging, and how intermittent fasting may help you live longer and healthier. Step inside the lab where a researcher is uncovering the origins of cancer cachexia a wasting syndrome responsible for 20 percent of cancer deaths worldwide to improve the lives of patients. The loss of skeletal muscle through disease, disuse, or aging is associated with a host of poor health outcomes, but promising new avenues of research are being studied every day at the University of Florida to make for a healthier tomorrow.

Recent research findings on the impact of nutrition on telomere length is unlocking the potential to combat premature aging at the cellular level. We have learned that while aging is a natural cellular process, premature aging is not and it can be positively impacted by an Evidence-Based Proactive Nutrition to Slow Cellular Aging diet plan. This book examines key elements of the biology of cell aging and focuses on enhancing mitochondrial function and preventing abnormal cell turnover thus preserving telomere length. It details the cellular damage caused by free radicals and ROS, explains the salutary effects of antioxidants, and the body's need for adequate nitrates and other nutrient substrates from which the body derives nitric oxide (NO) to support cardiovascular health. This book is the first to feature a simple do-it-yourself test of the effects of the diet on the availability of NO for - heart health. The book guides the reader through the rationale for a modified Mediterranean style diet that supplies the body with an adequate daily intake of essential nutrients, simple high antioxidants, and other functional foods. It includes simple, easy to prepare appealing recipes promoting a seamless transition to a healthy, age-defying lifestyle.

This book delineates how systems biology, pharmacogenomic, and behavioral approaches, as applied to neurodevelopmental toxicology, provide a structure to arrange information in a biological model. The text reviews and discusses approaches that can be used as effective tools to dissect mechanisms underlying pharmacological and toxicological phenomena associated with the exposure to drugs or environmental toxicants during development. The book intends to elaborate functional outcomes of component-to-component relationships using rodent and nonhuman primate in vitro and in vivo models that allow for the directional and quantitative description of the complete organism in response to environmental perturbations. In addition, attention has also been directed to some of the more recent methodologies, including genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, applied in the evolutionary neurobiological field.

Although books exist on the evolution of aging, this is the first book written from the perspective of again as an adaptive program. It offers an insight into the implications of research on aging genetics, The author proposes the Demographic Theory of Senescence, whereby aging has been affirmatively selected because it levels the death rate over time helping stabilize population dynamics and prevent extinctions.

A closer look at your patient's family situation can help you develop a more effective treatment plan Family Behavioral Issues in Health and Illness is a basic but thorough introduction to the impact family dynamics can have on a person's health. Ideal as a supplemental training text for healthcare professionals, this unique book examines the connections between family and health, presenting a concise summary of family systems theory, basic family assessment, and the family life cycle. The book provides an understanding of how the patterns and systems found in a diverse range of family styles can create special health issues, and how the ability to assess and anticipate those issues can ensure the most comprehensive patient care and cost-effective management of time and resources. As long as families continue to be the primary environment where patients learn and develop their beliefs and overall attitudes about life, it remains essential that any primary healthcare model includes a strong background in family dynamics and the critical, pivotal points of family life. Family Behavioral Issues in Health and Illness addresses the most important aspects of family to consider when providing care, presenting practical, real-life case studies that examine the resilience, strengths, and possibilities of families, as well as the problems and dysfunctions. The book looks at how significant events, such as marriage, divorce, birth, and death affect families, and how a knowledge of special family issues, including parenting, abuse, disability, and chronic illness prepares the healthcare professional to provide effective care for traditional, single-parent, multiracial, blended, adoptive, and same-gender families. Family Behavioral Issues in Health and Illness examines: boundaries, roles, and rules triangulation subsystems scapegoating parentification healthy families the family genogram spiritual crises of family members infertility families without children intergenerational families the family in later life coping with alcoholism, dementia, bereavement, and/or mental illness and much more Family Behavioral Issues in Health and Illness is an essential reference for healthcare professionals, educators, parents, and family members. The book provides a practical understanding of family relationships that helps healthcare providers guide patients toward a more complete well-being.

When confronted with a neurological or psychiatric disorder in an elderly individual, a clinician or researcher is likely to ask how the processes of ageing have influenced the aetiology and presentation of the disorder, and will impact on its efficient management. There are many urban myths about ageing, and some of these apply to the brain. The reviews included in this book are an attempt to flush out some of these myths, and arm the clinician and general researcher with the empirical facts that can be mustered to substantiate claims about ageing. There are many salient questions: is cognitive change to be expected in an elderly individual? Is this change progressive, relentless and unselective, or is it focal and constrained? Would every person who lived long enough develop Alzheimer s disease? Do our neurones die as we get old? What happens to the size of the brain and its metabolic activity? How do our hormones change with age? Can anti-oxidants slow or even stop the process of ageing? Are genes important in the ageing brain or is it all in the environment? How much of what we are is due to what we eat? The contributors to this book, each an expert in their field, have addressed some of these questions in a language simple enough for a general reader to understand.

The book also deals with some of the most prominent brain disorders of old age - Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, vascular dementia, and depression. The focus is on the impact of ageing on these disorders. The discussions lay out a broad map for the clinician dealing with neuropsychiatric disorders, and the future researcher of brain ageing. In a field in which the developments are too numerous for any one individual to keep pace with, this book presents up-to-date summaries that can be a useful starting point. The field of brain ageing abounds in tabloid science. This book counters this by providing a strong empirical grounding and considered synthesis of the research."

A window on the insular world of autism, this book offers a rare close look at the mysterious condition that afflicts approximately 350,000 Americans and affects millions more. As they make sense of the many features of autism at every level of intellectual functioning across the life span, Marian Sigman and Lisa Capps weave together clinical vignettes, research findings, methodological considerations, and historical accounts. The result is a compelling, comprehensive view of the disorder, as true to human experience as it is to scientific observation. Children with Autism is unique in that it views autism through the lens of developmental psychopathology, a discipline grounded in the belief that studies of normal and abnormal development can inform and enhance one another. Sigman and Capps conduct readers through the course of development from infancy to adulthood, outlining the differences between normal and autistic individuals at each stage and highlighting the links between growth in cognitive, social, and emotional domains. In particular, Sigman and Capps suggest that deficits in social understanding emerge in the early infancy of autistic children, and they explore how these deficits organize the development of autistic individuals through the course of their lives. They also examine the effects certain characteristics can have on an autistic person's adjustment over time. Their book concludes with an overview of existing interventions and promising avenues for further research.

Adolescents embody the best hopes of American society. Their vital role in shaping our future lends particular significance to their success in negotiating the passage from childhood to adulthood, while their intensity and visibility often make them barometers of social change. It is all the more remarkable, then, that this critical period has only recently captured the full attention of researchers.

"At the Threshold" presents the long-awaited findings of the Carnegie Foundation study on adolescence. It offers a comprehensive overview of what investigators are learning about normal development and provides an interdisciplinary synthesis of research into the biological, social, and psychological changes occurring during this key stage in the life span. While focusing on the contexts of adolescent life - social and ethnic, family and school, leisure and work-it also addresses how researchers are doing in the effort to understand the intersection of processes that initiate and sustain adolescent development and to characterize the extraordinary changes that occur during these years.

Contrary to popular belief, large numbers of young people continue to mature into productive members of society. "At the Threshold" seeks to allow professionals and nonprofessionals alike important access to the reality of normal adolescent experience. The authors recognize that only if we begin to understand and clearly articulate the parameters of successful adolescent development can we hope to intervene with those individuals whose lives seem aimed toward unsatisfactory futures.

Dyslexia and Development presents the latest findings of neurobiological research, which suggest a link between seemingly minor brain abnormalities and epilepsy, learning disorders, and autism. The authors focus on the plasticity of the developing nervous system and the possible role of subtle early brain injury in the emergence of these disorders, particularly dyslexia. The distinguished contributors to this volume examine epidemiological and clinical issues that may make the developing brain more vulnerable to environmental and genetic influences, which can in turn lead to abnormal brain plasticity and behavior. Although major forms of brain malformation have been clearly associated with functional deficits, mild forms have historically been ignored or trivialized; this book supports the hypothesis that several types of such malformation reflect brain injury during critical stages of development, and also the premise that more and more disturbances of thought and behavior stem from abnormalities of brain organization. Neurologists and neurobiologists, psychologists, psycholinguists, psychiatrists, and special educators will find here a guide to more enlightened understanding and more effective treatment of dyslexia. In fact, the book emphasizes the positive aspect of the neurobiological deviation that dyslexic brains seem to show, along with the observation that people with such brains are often quite creative and extraordinary, rather than handicapped. In turn, the revised consideration of dyslexia should lead to more serious attention to other disturbances of childhood behavior as problems in developmental neurology, as well as to a deeper analysis of possible neurological bases for individual differences in normal behavior and personality.

Research on physical maturity has demonstrated conclusively that the assumption of an age-homogenous development does not always hold true. This volume presents a biosocial model focusing on the role of individual differences in biological maturation to be used as a framework for empirical studies exploring adolescent female development. The longitudinal design of the research program offers the possibilities to examine both short- and long-term consequences for individual variations in pubertal development. In the present volume, the data for these analyses consist of a broad range of biological, mental, psychological, behavioral, and social factors extending from the age of 10 to the age of 30. Some of the questions the present volume attempts to answer are:
* Are variations in the timing of pubertal development among girls related to their psychological and social life situation in the adolescent years? If so, when is the relation most prominent? In what areas is the relation most prominent? How does the relation come about?
* Do interindividual differences in physical maturation have any long-term consequences for adult life? If so, in what areas, for which girls, and through which developmental processes does pubertal development operate? The long-term consequences are a major concern addressed in considerable detail.

First Published in 1989 this is a collection of essays based on a series of lectures given at a symposium held at the University of Southampton Medical School from eight experts in the field of growth failure. Interest in growth hormone, its regulation and its therapeutic use has grown enormously since the introduction of genetically engineered growth hormone in 1985. The very pratcial probelms of measuring growth, the physiology of growth failure and its epidemiology are followed by a richly illustrated chapter on the spectrum of diseases assciated with short stature and an expert with extensive experience in the field looks at the application of growth hormone therapy.

The past century has witnessed a revolution. Less than a hundred years ago, the average Western life expectancy was 40; now it is 80. And there is no end in sight: the first person who will reach 135 has already been born. It's the most radical change in our society since industrialisation, and naturally it raises many questions. What do longer life spans mean for the way we organise our societies? How can people best prepare themselves for living considerably longer? Does it help to eat less, or to take hormones, vitamins, or minerals? And what can we learn from old people who remain full of vitality, despite illness and infirmity? Growing Older without Feeling Old is the definitive book on a key issue for the 21st century, written by one of the world's leading experts in geriatric medicine. Combining medical, biological, economic, and sociological insights, Rudi Westendorp explores the causes of the ageing revolution and explains how we can greet it with confidence and enjoy leading longer, healthier, and more productive lives than ever before.