Autonomic Nervous System provides an introduction to the latest science and detailed chapters on advances in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of autonomic system disorders. The autonomic nervous system controls all involuntary actions within the human nervous system. Core body functions regulated by the autonomic system include breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature, perspiration, and bowel, bladder and sexual function. Our understanding of the neurotransmitters associated with the autonomic nervous system has expanded over the past 15 years associated with current research efforts and are now impacting the diagnosis and treatment of autonomic nervous system disorders by clinical neurologists.   This volume is a valuable companion for neuroscience and clinical neurology researchers and practitioners.

"This volume departs from other books on the autonomous nervous system by emphasizing how it is fully integrated with the rest of the brain and that it is multi-systemic, with integration occurring at many different levels of the central nervous system. The treatment, therefore, could interest biologists and medical researchers as well as neurologists." --ProtoView.com, January 2014

Dr. Ruud M. Buijs is head of the Physiology department of the I.I.Biomedicas at the UNAM university and leader of the group Hypothalamic Integration Mechanisms. In that group, the scientists study how the brain and body interact with each other, and hereby the attention is focussed on autonomic and hormonal regulation of body functions under the influence of the biological clock of the brain. Dick Swaab (1944) earned his medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Amsterdam, where he became involved in brain research during his third year of medical school. He was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research from 1978 to 2005. Since 1979 he is Professor of Neurobiology at the Medical Faculty, University of Amsterdam. In 1985, Dr. Swaab founded the Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB) to serve as a source of clinically and neuropathologically well-documented research tissue. Since its founding, the Brain Bank has provided samples from more than 4,000 autopsies to 500 research groups in 25 countries. He was director of the NBB until 2005. He is Leader Research team Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Neth. Inst for Neuroscience, an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Swaab is also appointed for 2011-2017 Chao Kuang Piu Chair of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China. His major research interests focus on, sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation, aging of the brain, Alzheimer’s disease, the neurobiological basis of depression, suicide and eating disorders. He has published over 540 papers in SCI journals, authored more than 200 chapters in books, and edited more than 60 books. Swaab mentored 84 PhD students from which 16 are now full professor. He is “Companion in the Order of the Dutch Lion”, bestowed by her Royal Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In 2008 Swaab obtained the Academy medal for his role in national and international neuroscience. Dick Swaab is author of the 2 volume monograph The Human Hypothalamus that appeared in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology series, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1000 pp) and the Dutch best seller We are our Brains (450.000 copies sold), that is translated in 14 languages. A children's version of the book (You are your brains) has also appeared in Dutch in 2013 and Russian (2014). Swaab's H-factor is 76.