NEUROLOGICAL UROLOGY

that developments within them have already yielded advances in therapeutics. The Open University is therefore to be congratulated on introducing, early in its existence, a course on the biological bases of behaviour which ignores conventional interdisciplinary boundaries: this volume is the course reader and contains papers reprinted from general scientific journals or texts. Thirty-four papers cover the structural and physiological substrates of perception, emotion, motivation, memory and learning, their sociological aspects, and certain philosophical and ideological problems generated in this area of knowledge and inquiry. Fourteen of these papers are reprints from Scientific American and the authority of the text and excellence of its presentation are therefore assured: in general this can also be said of the other contributions. Even a balanced selection, as this is, of such a small number of brief articles covering a very large field inevitably leaves the novice with a rather tachistoscopic impression of it, but the authors have helped the reader by giving him his bearings in a brief introduction to each section. Though intended for those taking a specific Open University course this book would interest the neuropsychiatrist wishing to remind himself of the scientific background to his clinical work and some articles can be read for their humour or for their provocativeness.