The Brain Atlas: A Visual Guide to the Human Central Nervous System by J. Hanaway, T.A. Woolsey, M.H. Gado and M.P. Roberts, Jr

Fitzgerald Science Press, 1998. £24.95 (x + 250 pages)ISBN 1 891786 05 9Anyone who has been lost while driving in an unfamiliar city knows how irritating it can be to not have a good roadmap. Imagine the frustration of blindly navigating tortuous thoroughfares and alleyways, foiled by countless one-way streets and strangely named roads that seem to begin and end randomly. Meanwhile, no-one you talk to on the street ever seems to know the exact location of the place you are trying to get to. In fact, even if they do know, ‘a picture is always worth a thousand words’ and a literary description generally fails to capture the required information. To a student first being introduced to the anatomy of the human brain, this feeling of being lost and lacking a good roadmap can be all too familiar. The initiated neuroscientist, much like the citizen of a large town, will also, often enough, need a roadmap to find a specific street, avenue or place. Essentially, everyone who wants to find his or her way around the mind-boggling array of structures and pathways of the CNS is going to need an excellent roadmap, and as far as we can tell The Brain Atlas is it.Like a good map, The Brain Atlas is organized in a clear and easily accessible manner that makes orientation within the brain easy. After a brief ‘how-to’ guide for using the book, the atlas starts off with an introductory overview of the CNS that is an excellent point of departure for beginners who are still learning to differentiate the occipital lobe from the optic nerve. Life-sized high-quality photographs help readers to get a real feel for the actual dimensions of the human brain and its various structures. The gross anatomy of the brain is then approached in significantly more detail through a series of coronal, axial and sagittal sections paired with excellently matched MRI images and colorful insets that depict the territories supplied by blood vessels in the corresponding slices. The next part of the atlas contains detailed histological sections of the brainstem and cerebellum, followed by sections of the basal ganglia and thalamus. The final part of the book combines various images of specimens; brain and spinal-cord slices; and radiological studies to illustrate principal pathways in the CNS.Unlike many weighty neuroanatomy tomes, this book does not seek to weigh readers down with unwieldy text. Like a well-detailed roadmap, The Brain Atlas relies on its lavish illustrations rather than long drawn-out prose to convey the bulk of its information. In addition, the book has a number of convenient, thoughtful features that make it even easier to use. The pages are color-coded to facilitate quick and easy reference. Each group of plates has a ‘locator icon’, which is placed in the upper outer corner of the page, that helps readers fit particular slices and sections into the larger context of overall brain morphology. Carefully numbered labels make the text perfect for student self-testing. Finally, the book is accompanied by a Macintosh- and PC-compatible CD-ROM, which contains a Microsoft Powerpoint® presentation, that displays all of the slides shown in the book.To our taste and knowledge, this book is certainly one of the best guides to CNS structure available today. Nevertheless, there are a few ways in which this book could be made even better. One useful addition to the final section of the book would be the inclusion of wiring diagrams that illustrate the schematic organization of more-complex systems, in conjunction with their anatomical diagrams. Furthermore, more-comprehensive presentation of cortico–cortical pathways in the last part of the book might also have been in order. Both of these additions would make the book more appealing to cognitive neuroscientists and neuropsychologists who are frequently in need of roadmaps of the brain and its connections.However, it was the CD-ROM that we found somewhat disappointing. The electronic presentation reproduces the illustrations of the text quite faithfully, but does not include labels to the structures depicted, which is somewhat inconvenient. Most importantly, the CD-ROM seems to derive little benefit from the electronic format. One might imagine converting the road-map into a true electronic pathfinder and navigator. For example, it should be possible to dissect the brain in planes and slices on-line, follow a pathway along all slices or re-slice the brain in new planes. This would certainly make the CD-ROM a most-valuable addition to the book. In the present form, the CD-ROM does not seem to add much to the printed form of the book.Overall, The Brain Atlas presents neuroanatomy in an intuitive yet comprehensive manner, which makes it an excellent reference book and an outstanding learning text for anyone trying to master the intricate layout of the brain and its related structures. We recommend this atlas to all fellow travellers who are preparing to embark on an exploration of the intricate wonders of the human brain.