ROBERT WILLIAM Mc CARLEY Laboratory of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Brockton V A Medical Center, Brockton, Massachusetts The alternation of waking and sleeping, the daily course of the ad- vancing and receding tides of consciousness, has long been a familiar part of our experience. But it is a new idea that autonomic and respiratory phys- iology are equally and dramatically altered in a parallel fashion, and it is this concept that is summarized and developed here. The editors have drawn together thematically related chapters written by researchers with direct experience and a high level of expertise in the areas they address. The main theme is the relationship of general physiological alterations during sleep to cellular physiology and to the pathology of sleep. What is distinctive and especially appealing about this book on sleep is its emphasis on the autonomic and respiratory systems. This volume is, I believe, the first to explore these topics systematically and to blend phe- nomenological description with possible cellular mechanisms and ties to clinical pathology. As such, this book should find an important place in the library of workers in the fields of sleep research, autonomic and respiratory physiology, and related neuroscience disciplines; it also belongs in the li- brary of clinicians concerned with the disorders of sleep. This overview of topics and chapters gives an indication of their cath- olicity.
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