Behavioral Endocrinology (The MIT Press)

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 providing 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 behavior, courtship behavior, parental behavior, aggression, stress response, cognitive function in humans, ingestive behaviors, 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 behavioral endocrinology has emerged as the study of how hormones alter behavior and how behavior 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 steroids can become dangerously aggressive. 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: Michael J. Baum, Jill B. Becker, Eliot Brenowitz, S. Marc Breedlove, C. Sue Carter, David Crews, John Dark, Stephen E. Glickman, Elizabeth Hampson, Darcy B. Kelley, Doreen Kimura, Edward P. Monaghan, Lawrence P. Morin, Jay S. Rosenblatt, Robert M. Sapolsky, Rae Silver, Edward M. Stricker, James W. Truman, Joseph G. Verbalis