Basic Neurochemistry: Molecular, Cellular and Medical Aspects (Periodicals)

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Summary: Alcohol and the chemistry of human memory
Review: Some fresh angles on the memory problem can be pieced together from distinct bits and pieces included in this book on the brain's catabolic habits, on starvation and diabetes, and on the effects of alcohol and other drugs on the chemistry of the brain.

Alcoholism offers us clues to how the memory works and fails. In both chronic and acute alcoholism, it appears the pen of memory stops writing quite suddenly. In the extreme chronic condition, an alcoholic who has progressed to Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome can be trapped forever in a particular day - the day the pen of memory lifted.

For a few fortunate alcoholics the brain's working memory can be restored with early injections of Vitamin B1, which is thiamine. Thiamine is a very common co-factor. It operates in a great many different biochemical pathways. But look: One among those many pathways is quite possibly the biochemical pathway that is essential for -- and could thus lead us straight to -- the human memory machine. The grand prize. This helpful hint has never been followed up exhaustively, although there are lots of takes on what might be going on.

This book holds a second hint. Perhaps the same crucial biochemical pathway to memory can be interrupted at a different point, in a different way -temporarily -- in the brain of a drinker experiencing an acute alcoholic memory blackout. See pages 659-660 for a summary discussion of ethanol, glucose and ketone body catabolism in the brain.

Notice sometime, in the spirit of science, the horrible, noxious, acetone like odor on the breath of a heavy drinker. It is very evident on the morning after. Ketone bodies are still so plentiful in the blood that an observer can smell them, and the brain (perhaps thinking the body is starving) may have shifted gears to protect itself. Instead of glucose, which the brain almost invariably prefers to eat, the brain can in a starvation emergency burn ketone bodies instead. Whenever they turn up, as for example on the occasion of a drinking binge, the brain will sense an emergency and make the changeover from glucose passively and automatically. So perhaps this emergency shift away from glucose is another pointer to the biochemical pathway that leads to human memory.

Maybe sugar synthesis, via the phosphogluconate shunt, is an important part of the memory pathway. It we are talking about ribose synthesis, which is certainly one possibility, this would imply an interruption or a shift, within the programmable phosphogluconate shunt, to the production of sugars other than ribose. Downstream, the pinch on ribose production would also constrain the synthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids. It is an in interesting possibility because some people are examining anew the long despised notion that nucleic acids might constitute a human memory store. See Steven Rose's The Making of Memory for this longshot idea.

The basic notion is that to make a memory machine, you could simply run the equations describing the Central Dogma in reverse. (The first step, from Protein back to RNA, is thought to be impossible. However, the cell essentially takes notes on its protein manufacturing activity, leaving behind discarded introns like a dressmaker leaving shards of cloth on the floor. From the cutout cloth, you can determine the pattern of the dress. An intron uniquely marks a gene, and an intron can be written all the way back to DNA. A sequence of introns, or some sort of intronic shorthand, would essentially tape record a sequence of protein synthesis - a program.)

Another possible memory storage medium is a sprigged together sugar or glycoprotein molecule, perhaps assembled in the manner of a ganglioside.

There are lots of other avenues of action for ethanol upon memory. For examples, Ethanol is directly toxic to the nerves of the hippocampus, it affects LTP there and it also bombs the daylights out of the liver, suggesting that alcoholic memory loss is not a biochemistry problem to be pursued in the brain alone. If you are interested in the memory problem, Basic Neurochemistry is a major resource and great hunting ground for fresh ideas.

As with any other text in neuroscience, you should first read Spikes (Rieke et al. 1996) as an essential preface. It will help you parse out which assumptions in this science can still be believed, post 1993, and which assumptions should now be sharply questioned or instantly discarded.

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Summary: an excellent introductory reference book in Neurochemistry
Review: The topics in the book are arranged well. It is suitable for both junior and senior students. The concepts are explained clearly. This must be the most excellent book in this field for introductory courses.

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Summary: A book to get if you need a good understanding of neurochem
Review: This book is ideal for both undergrad and grad students in the fields of neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychology. The information is arranged neatly with the authors introducing concepts at the cellular level (anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry), then moving on to intercellular signaling. From here, the neurochemical factors are introduced, outlining their functional significance at the molecular level. The last few chapters of this book expands on the role of several neurochemical interactions in the context of diseases like Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld-Jakob (Mad cow-like disorder), Huntington's (and other related basal ganglia disorders), and several Psychiatric disorders (anxiety, mood disorders, addiction, etc). The figures are excellent, and succintly explained. Several color plates are also included. Note that the book I bought has textual addenda/errata located at the back, in order to correct factual/typographical errors. Nevertheless, these corrections don't affect the whole integrity of the contents, but rather they strengthened it.

This book also includes a CD-ROM which constitutes the book's contents, and provides nice figures that you can use as a reference. Overall, I recommend this book if you think you will embark on a career in the medical sciences, or if you are an undergrad that would like to go to grad schools.