Supersensitivity Following Lesions of the Nervous System

This book presents a survey of research on neuronal behaviour after denervation. For a hundred years physiologists have been investigating the hyperirritability of damaged cells, but the phenomenon -- a function of organic excitability -- remains unexplained. Dr. Stavraky's complete and exhaustive account of this research, to which he has contributed much himself, summarizes all that is known at present. The implications of this knowledge are important for the clinician, neurologist, and electro-encephalographer, throwing light, as it does, on various pathological syndromes of the brain and central nervous system. Dr. Stavraky keeps a happy balance between the physiological and the pathological aspects of sypersensitivity, and his book should be welcomed by physiologist and pathologist alike. Among the general topics considered are: the responses to various convulsants and anticonvulsants of the central nervous system after lesions or ablations; the relation of deafferentation and supersensitivity in the spinal cord and cerebral hemispheres; reversals, autonomic control, and supersensitivity; and the restitution of functions following lesions and its relation to disinhibition, augmented influx and supersensitivity.