This book presents a survey of research on neuronal behaviour after denervation. For a hundred years physiologists have been investigating the hyperirritability of damaged cells, but the phenomenon -- a function of organic excitability -- remains unexplained. Dr. Stavraky's complete and exhaustive account of this research, to which he has contributed much himself, summarizes all that is known at present. The implications of this knowledge are important for the clinician, neurologist, and electro-encephalographer, throwing light, as it does, on various pathological syndromes of the brain and central nervous system. Dr. Stavraky keeps a happy balance between the physiological and the pathological aspects of sypersensitivity, and his book should be welcomed by physiologist and pathologist alike.
Among the general topics considered are: the responses to various convulsants and anticonvulsants of the central nervous system after lesions or ablations; the relation of deafferentation and supersensitivity in the spinal cord and cerebral hemispheres; reversals, autonomic control, and supersensitivity; and the restitution of functions following lesions and its relation to disinhibition, augmented influx and supersensitivity.

GEORGE W. STAVRAKY received his first medical degree at the University of Odessa. He was a student of the celebrated physiologist Boris P. Babkin, himself a pupil of Pavlov, and followed Babkin to McGill University where he continued his medical education and received his M.D., C.M., and M.Sc. degrees. He was a member of the Montreal Neurological Institute from 1932 to 1936 and then joined the Department of Physiology at the University of Western Ontario. He became a full Professor in 1949. He has a long list of scientific publications dealing with the physiology of digestion, circulation, neurophysiology, and pharmacology of the nervous system.

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