From Loss to Memory
Behind the Discovery of Synaptic Pruning

Riveting biography of scientist Peter Huttenlocher taking reader from his childhood in war-torn Germany to his discovery of synaptic pruning.

Anna Huttenlocher (Author)

9781009267052, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 July 2023

150 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.1 cm, 0.399 kg

How do the billions of connections between neurons in our brain change as we learn and remember? This is the story of the discovery and the discoverer of synaptic pruning, the process of synapse elimination central to making us who we are. Taking the reader from Professor Peter Huttenlocher's childhood in wartime and post-war Germany to his emigration to the US to reunite with his mother and the launch and progress of a career in medicine and research, we uncover the motivations and process of scientific discovery that led to an unexpected leap in our understanding of the human brain. Decades after the discovery, the importance of synaptic pruning to early learning, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and other conditions are now in the process of being uncovered.

Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Discovering Synaptic Pruning
3. Else, Peter's Mother
4. Richard, Peter's Father, and Peter's Uncle Fritz
5. Greiz: Kriegskinder (Children of War)
6. In Braubach, after the War
7. University of Buffalo and Philosophy
8. Harvard Medical School
9. Understanding Sleep and Consciousness: Research at NIH
10. Entering the Cognitive Revolution: Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology
11. Physician First, Scientist Second?
12. Comparative Brain Regions and Synapse Formation
13. Stimulating Progress on Developmental Brain Disorders
14. Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Schizophrenia: A Role for Synaptic Pruning?
15. Early Childhood Education
16. Peter and Janellen's Collaboration
17. Microglia and the Mechanisms of Synaptic Pruning
18. Looking Forward: Being a Physician and a Scientist
19. Parkinson's Disease and Berlin
20. Auf Deutsch
Reflections at the End
Glossary
Index.

Subject Areas: Neurology & clinical neurophysiology [MJN]