Behavioral Endocrinology (UK ed.)

"Behavioral Endocrinology" addresses a major area within the field of biological psychology, presenting an up-to-date, comprehensive survey of basic concepts in the field at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level.

It is unique in producing a comparative approach that draws on literature from both vertebrate and invertebrate systems, and in offering a broad analysis that spans levels from the molecular to the evolutionary.

Sixteen chapters written by experts in their respective disciplines cover such topics as sexual behaviour, courtship behaviour, parental behaviour, agression, stress response, cognitive function in humans, ingestive behaviours, and biological rhythms.

Each topic is first discussed in general and then supported by detailed examples that illustrate the main points.

Over the past 50 years the field of behavioural endocrinology has emerged as the study of how hormones alter behaviour and how behaviour affects hormone release. Opinions abound as to whether women's intellectual abilities are affected by their menstrual cycle, whether people are "born with" a homosexual orientation, whether hormones force men to be promiscuous, or whether athletes taking anabolic steriods can become dangerously agressive.

Following a review of the principles of hormone action and basic neuroscience, "Behavioral Endocrinology" provides a solid, scientific view of what the important issues and complications are for all of these questions and many others.

Contributors: M.J. Baum, J.B. Becker, E. Brenowitz, S.M. Breedlove, C.S. Carter, D. Crews, J. Dark, S.E. Glickman, E. Hampson, D.B. Kelley, D. Kimura, E.P. Monaghan, L.P. Morin, J.S. Rosenblatt, R.M. Sapolsky, R. Silver, E.M. Stricker, J.W. Truman, J.G. Verbalis.