Neuroendocrinology
Neuroendocrinology arose from the recognition that the brain, especially the hypothalamus, controls secretion of pituitary gland hormones, and has subsequently expanded to investigate numerous interconnections of the endocrine and nervous systems.
The endocrine system consists of numerous glands throughout the body that produce and secrete hormones of diverse chemical structure, including peptides, steroids, and neuroamines.
The neuroendocrine system is the mechanism by which the hypothalamus maintains homeostasis, regulating reproduction, metabolism, eating and drinking behaviour, energy utilization, osmolarity and blood pressure.
These two neuronal systems project axons to the median eminence, where they release their peptides into portal blood vessels for transport to the anterior pituitary.
[15] Ernst and Berta Scharrer,[16] of the University of Munich the Albert Einstein College of Medicine are credited as co-founders the field of neuroendocrinology with their initial observations and proposals in 1945 concerning neuropeptides.
Harris, the Dr. Lee's Professor of Anatomy at Oxford University, is credited with showing that the anterior pituitary gland of mammals is regulated by hormones secreted by hypothalamic neurons into the hypothalamohypophysial portal circulation.
By contrast, the hormones of the posterior pituitary gland are secreted into the systemic circulation directly from the nerve endings of hypothalamic neurons.
Roger Guillemin,[19] a medical student of Faculté de Médecine of Lyon, and Andrew W. Schally of Tulane University isolated these factors from the hypothalamus of sheep and pigs, and then identified their structures.
Guillemin and Schally were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1977 for their contributions to understanding "the peptide hormone production of the brain".
[citation needed] In 1952, Andor Szentivanyi, of the University of South Florida, and Geza Filipp wrote the world's first research paper showing how neural control of immunity takes place through the hypothalamus.
[20] Today, neuroendocrinology embraces a wide range of topics that arose directly or indirectly from the core concept of neuroendocrine neurons.
So understanding these central actions also became the province of neuroendocrinologists, sometimes even when these peptides cropped up in quite different parts of the brain that appeared to serve functions unrelated to endocrine regulation.
[23] Since the original experiments by Geoffrey Harris investigating the communication of the hypothalamus with the pituitary gland, much has been learned about the mechanistic details of this interaction.
Recent approaches have incorporated various mathematical models to understand previously identified mechanisms and predict systemic response and adaptation under various circumstances.
[24] In 1974, Walters and Hatton investigated the effect of water dehydration by electrically stimulating the supraoptic nucleus—the hypothalamic center responsible for the release of vasopressin.
