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This rather specialized bulletin is not a comprehensive review of all recent work on the hypothalamus but a series of review papers by British workers of recent work in their own fields. The behavioural and psychological aspects are relatively neglected. No comprehensive review has appeared since 1940.
The hypothalamus is concerned in the control and patterning of many of the bodily impulses and drives which interest us—eating, drinking, mating, metabolism, aggression, pubertal changes, maternal behaviour, and the control of the endocrine and autonomic systems, for example. Further knowledge of this region is necessary for understanding the actual mechanisms whereby psychological and somatic events interact.
These papers outline the enormous strides made in this direction during the past twenty years, due to the pioneering and often beautiful work of G. W. Harris and others. Many of the nerve cells in the hypothalamus have now been shown to secrete very active chemical substances called ‘releasing factors’. The nerve cells have two-way connections with the rhinencephalon, the part of the cerebral cortex most intimately concerned with affect and emotion, and also with the mid-brain and the ‘arousal’ centres.
Six of these chemical releasing factors have so far been identified. They are secreted into the capillaries of a ‘portal’ (transporting) system of blood vessels whereby they reach the pituitary gland and cause the release of corresponding pituitary hormones; for example luteinizing hormone, adrenocorticotrophic hormone, and thyroid-stimulating hormone.
These discoveries of the variety of chemical substances which can be secreted by nerve cells are making it increasingly clear that the transmission of signals within the nervous system is complex not only as regards nervous pathways but also in the numbers of different transmitting chemicals which may be involved. Recent neuropharmacological work related to schizophrenia and mood changes and to substances like serotoni