Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System

Even if the “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) and, among them, stocks of organoph- phorus (OP) agents (also referred to as war gases and nerve gases) were not found in Iraq following the US-Iraq war, the relative ease with which these substances can be made from harmless precursors and the low cost of their manufacture will continue to fascinate pow- hungry, ruthless dictators, as well as multinational and international terrorists, particularly as the close relationship between the OP agents and useful insecticides makes it easy to disguise the importation and purchase of small amounts of the precursors. Indeed, the use by Saddam Hussein of a nerve gas against the Kurds and his possible employment of the OP agents during his war with Iran, and the Sarin attack in the Tokyo underground by an extremist religious set magnetized the world with respect to the OP drugs. As these drugs exert their toxicity via their cholinergic action on the nervous, particularly central nervous, system, it is no wonder that the research in the cholinergic ? eld attracts, and merits, our intense attention. These considerations underlie the signi? cance of this book, as Alex Karczmar devotes an entire chapter of Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System to anticholinest- ases (antiChEs), and as he is an acknowledged expert in the ? eld of cholinergic toxicity as well as a consultant to the Surgeon General of the U. S. Army.

The saga of the central cholinergic nervous system is unparalleled among the stories of various areas of neurosciences. Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System reviews the very multiple methodologies that underlie cholinergic research. The book is historical, dynamic and conceptual in its approach. It stresses the concept and devotes considerable space to the history of the various topics of cholinergic research and modes of cholinergic discoveries. The volume provides the reader with a very complete overview of cholinergicity and its ramifications and will be of interest to investigators, scholars and students of various areas of neuroscience and neuroanatomy.

The volume’s eleven chapters cover a wide variety of topics including the complexity of synthesis of acetylcholine, cholinesterases, cholinergic teratology, anticholinesterase agents, clinical use of cholinergic drugs, central cholinergic pathways and behaviors with cholinergic correlates. The figures and diagrams help illustrate various subjects and its photographs of "cholinergikes" of the past and present bring a personal note to the book. The book illustrates the peaks that have been reached in the course of the history of cholinergic research and challenges the perennial frontier of human science: the understanding of ourselves.

"…This reactivated my synaptic circuitry devoted to science and history….Exploring the Vertebrate Cholinergic Nervous System is a impressive picture of one century of cholinergic adventure…"

--Yves Dunant, University of Geneva

"I have long believed that the ‘cholinergic saga’ needs to be told, and no one is better equipped to do that than Alex Karczmar."

--Larry Butcher, University of California, Los Angeles