A select group of highly renowned scientists - among them four Nobel Prize Winners - have been asked to summarize significant developments of their ownrecent research in the life sciences at a workshop organized on the occasionof the opening of the new Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Langen near Frankfurt/ Main. They do this in a comparative fashion evaluating similar achievements in adjacent fields. Their intellectual state-of-the-art analysis and fascinating outlook on future perspectives provides exciting and stimulating reading. The authors address areas in virology, immunology, oncology and evolution. Intelligent design of vaccines and other immunologial drugs, virus evolution and viruses as nature's engineers, pathology of chronic autoimmune and central nervous system diseases and the biology of mammary cancer belong to the topics discussed. A book easy to read for scientists, doctors and students interested in rapidly developing fields in the life sciences.

This volume is based on the contributions presented at the symposium "Comparative Aspects of the Structure and Develop ment of the Forebrain in Lower Vertebrates", held on September 2-3, 1988, as a Satellite to the Annual Meeting of the European Neuroscience Association at the University of Zurich-Irchel. Within the two days the symposium lasted, the main topic, of course, had to be covered in an exemplary rather than a comprehensive way. However, the comparative interpretation of results revealed many similarities of forebrain organization in the wide spectrum of species considered. Besides a great deal of new data on forebrain structure and development, this book contains attempts based on various new methodological approaches to find homologies between brain structures of non mammalian vertebrates and mammals. Although we are still far from having unequivocal solutions for the latter problem, the contributions to this volume illustrate impres sively that comparative neuroscientists have better chances than ever of gaining new insights since they now have at their disposal a still increasing number of refined anatomical and physiological techniques such as immunocytochemistry, tract tracing of inject ed markers, and intracellular stimulation and recording. A promi nent contribution from the rapidly evolving field of molecular biology can be anticipated. A lot of stock taking will have to be done; yet, the bulk of studies using modern methods have been dealing with the mammalian brain.

Of all cytoarchitectonic structures in the brain of mammals, the hippocampus is perhaps the most conspicuous because of its unusual macroscopic and micro- scopic appearance. During phylogeny, the hippocampus has developed from a single cortical plate in amphibia into a complicated, three-dimensional convo- luted structure in mammals. Because of its clear lamination into axonal, perikaryal, and dendritic layers, the hippocampus has often been considered a simple cortex model. Indeed, this trilaminated construction resembles perhaps the least complicated type of neuronal cortex. There is a large literature describing hippocampal morphology in many species with respect to cytoarchitectonics, fiberarchitectonics, angioar- chitectonics, chemoarchitectonics, synaptology, and fine structure. On the other hand, up to the present day there has been no generally accepted concept on the main functions of the hippocampus, although many studies dealing with its physiological and biochemical properties and its possible influences on behav- ior have provided some valuable indications. Early investigators described the hippocampus as being a part of the "rhinen- cephalon" (e. g. Zuckerkandl 1887), together with other allocortical structures, such as the olfactory bulb, olfactory tubercle, and piriform lobe. Thus, the hippocampus was assigned to the olfactory system, and it was not until improved degeneration techniques were applied that this error could be corrected. It be- came clear that only part of the allocortical areas receive direct olfactory inputs, namely the retrobulbar region (anterior olfactory nucleus), precommissural hip- pocampus, olfactory tubercle, prepiriform region, periamygdalar region, and part of the entorhinal region.

Aktueller Leitfaden der Diagnose und Therapie, der in komprimierter Form einen raschen Einstieg in die Problematik erlaubt und gleichzeitig Grundwissen vermittelt.