Control of Pituitary Function

Zuckerman, S

doi:10.1038/178442a0

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…21 In vivo models were used to perform hypophyseal perturbations to test the hypothesis that a substance was secreted from the hypothalamus and humorally transmitted to the pituitary gland. 23 The concepts of neurosecretion 13 and secretory communication of brain to pituitary 22 paved the way for cell/tissue culture and organotypic neuroendocrine studies that followed. 23 The concepts of neurosecretion 13 and secretory communication of brain to pituitary 22 paved the way for cell/tissue culture and organotypic neuroendocrine studies that followed.…”

Section: Historical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From organotypic culture to body‐on‐a‐chip: A neuroendocrine perspective

Schwerdtfeger

Tobet

2018

J Neuroendocrinology

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The methods used to study neuroendocrinology have been as diverse as the discoveries to come out of the field. Maintaining live neurones outside of a body in vitro was important from the beginning, building on methods that dated back to at least the first decade of the 20th Century. Neurosecretion defines an essential foundation of neuroendocrinology based on work that began in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, many paradigms arose for studying everything from single neurones to whole organs in vitro. Two of these survived as preeminent systems for use throughout the second half of the century: cell cultures and explant systems. Slice cultures and explants that emerged as organotypic technologies included such neuroendocrine organs such as the brain, pituitary, adrenals and intestine. The vast majority of these studies were carried out in static cultures for which media were changed over a time scale of days. Tissues were used for experimental techniques such as electrical recording of neuronal physiology in single cells and observation by live microscopy. When maintained in vitro, many of these systems only partially capture the in vivo physiology of the organ system of interest, often because of a lack of cellular diversity (eg, neuronal cultures lacking glia). Modern microfluidic methodologies show promise for organ systems, ranging from the reproductive to the gastrointestinal to the brain. Moving forward and striving to understand the mechanisms that drive neuroendocrine signalling centrally and peripherally, there will always be a need to consider the heterogeneous cellular compositions of organs in vivo.

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Section: Historical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From organotypic culture to body‐on‐a‐chip: A neuroendocrine perspective

Schwerdtfeger

Tobet

2018

J Neuroendocrinology

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“…Zuckerman disliked Harris' theory and showed that, if he surgically transected the pituitary stalk in female ferrets, the animals still responded by coming into heat with increasing daylight (Zuckerman 1956). He described Harris' activity as 'an urge to explain the incomprehensible.'…”

Section: Regeneration Of Nerve Fibres and An Early View Of Apoptosismentioning

confidence: 99%

60 YEARS OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY: MEMOIR: Geoffrey Harris and my brush with his unit

Raisman

2015

Journal of Endocrinology

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Geoffrey Harris is chiefly known for his demonstration of the control of the pituitary gland by the portal vessels coming from the hypothalamus. This does not do justice to his extraordinary contribution to biology. Harris' life's work was central in demonstrating the brain/body interactions by which animals and humans adapt to their environment, and above all the control of that most crucial and proximate of all evolutionary eventsreproduction. In this brief review, I have tried to put Geoffrey Harris' work in the context of the scientific thinking at the time when he began his work, and above all, the contribution of his mentor, FHA Marshall, on whose towering shoulders Harris rose. But this is mainly my personal story, in which I have tried to show the debt that my work owed to Harris and especially to my dear friend, the late Keith Brown-Grant in Harris' team. I myself was never an endocrinologist, but over a short period in the early 1970s, under the influence of such inspirational mentors, and using purely anatomical methods, I was able to demonstrate sexual dimorphism and hormone-dependent sexual differentiation in the connections of the preoptic area, regeneration of the median eminence, the ultrastructure of apoptosis, the requirement for the suprachiasmatic nuclei in reproductive rhythms, the existence of non-rod or cone photoreceptors in the albino rat retina and, later, the expression of vasopressin by solitary (one in 600) magnocellular neurons in the polydipsic di/di Brattleboro mutant rat; this phenomenon was subsequently shown to be due to aC1 reading frameshift. I end this brief overview by mentioning some of the abiding and fascinating mysteries of the endocrine memory of the brain that arise from Harris' work on the control of the endocrines, and by pointing out how the current interest in chronobiology emphasises what a Cinderella the endocrine mechanisms have become in current brain imaging studies.

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“…But as far as the adenohypophysis was concerned, Harris's neurohumoral control hypothesis was still far from being universally accepted when the book was published [cf. Zuckerman, 1956; Sayers et al, 1958]. Indeed, this period was one of very vocal debate on the topic, with strong advocates in each of the opposing camps.…”

Section: ) Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, this period was one of very vocal debate on the topic, with strong advocates in each of the opposing camps. Most famously Sir Solly Zuckerman dismissed the book in his review in Nature as ‘an edifice of speculation’ [Zuckerman, 1956]. (Zuckerman's review is well worth reading in its entirety to get a sense of the debate that was going on at this time.)…”

Section: ) Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

60 YEARS OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY: The structure of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus: the neuroanatomical legacy of Geoffrey Harris

Watts

2015

Journal of Endocrinology

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In November 1955, Geoffrey Harris published a paper based on the Christian A Herter Lecture he had given earlier that year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA. The paper reviewed the contemporary research that was starting to explain how the hypothalamus controlled the pituitary gland. In the process of doing so, Harris introduced a set of properties that helped define the neuroendocrine hypothalamus. They included: i) three criteria that putative releasing factors for adenohypophysial hormones would have to fulfill; ii) an analogy between the representation of body parts in the sensory and motor cortices and the spatial localization of neuroendocrine function in the hypothalamus; and iii) the idea that neuroendocrine neurons are motor neurons and the pituitary stalk functions as a Sherringtonian final common pathway through which the impact of sensory and emotional events on neuroendocrine neurons must pass in order to control pituitary hormone release. Were these properties a sign that the major neuroscientific discoveries that were being made in the early 1950s were beginning to influence neuroendocrinology? This Thematic Review discusses two main points: the context and significance of Harris's Herter Lecture for how our understanding of neuroendocrine anatomy (particularly as it relates to the control of the adenohypophysis) has developed since 1955; and, within this framework, how novel and powerful techniques are currently taking our understanding of the structure of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus to new levels.

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Control of Pituitary Function

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

From organotypic culture to body‐on‐a‐chip: A neuroendocrine perspective

From organotypic culture to body‐on‐a‐chip: A neuroendocrine perspective

60 YEARS OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY: MEMOIR: Geoffrey Harris and my brush with his unit

60 YEARS OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY: The structure of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus: the neuroanatomical legacy of Geoffrey Harris

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