Talk:Models of hypothalamus
This article is well-written and covers most interesting develpments in modeling the hypothalamic system, including very recent works. The materials discussed are mostly accurate and are presented appropriately. It is one of the better written ones among the articles that have appeared so far at the Scholarpedia site. This article should be accepted by the Shcolarpedia with no reservation.
Below are some comments/suggestions that I think can contribute to improving this article further:
1) 1st paragraph " ..., and other endocrine glands such as the adrenal ..." could be changed to " ..., and endocrine glands located in other parts of the body such as the adrenal ..."
2) Between the 1st and the 2nd paragraphs that describe the relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary, a diagram demonstrating this relationship visually could be used to achieve an optimal clarity of the description.
3) In the paragraph bellow the description of different pituitary cells, " ..., hormonal secretion from pituitary cells arises as a consequence of electrical activity is not accurate. It should be " ..., hormonal secretion from pituitary cells arises when intracellular levels of Ca and cAMP are elevated as a result of increased electrical activity of the plasma membrane and/or the binding of a stimulating ligand to its receptors on the cell surface.
4) The citation (Brabant et al., 1992; Knobil, 1990) could give readers unfamiliar to this field a wrong impression that the Brabant et al., 1992 is more important. I think Knobil was the real leading figure in this field who discovered the pulsatility in early 1970s. I think the citation should read (Knobil, 1980, 1990; Brabant et al., 1986,1992).
Here I suggest adding two important refs:
Knobil, E. 1980. The neuroendcrine control of the menstrual cycle. Recent Prog. Horm. Res. 36: 63-88.
Brabant, G., U. Ranft, K. Oran, R.D. Hesch and A. von zur Muhlen. 1986. Thyrotropin - an episodically secreted hormone. Acta Endocrinol. 112:315-322.
5) In the paragraph above "Models with hypothalamus-pituitary interactions", discussions of rhythms that are much shorter in period (the ultradian) and the the circadian rhythm are mixed up without first explaining that the blood level of a hormone typically show several kinds of different rhythms with potentially different origins. Some clarification is required.
6) In the paragraph for "Growth hormone secretion", one important early reference that proposed two potential oscillatory mechanisms (or models) could be cited:
Martin, J.B. 1979. Brain mechanisms for integration of growth hormone secretion. Physiologist. 22:23-29.
7) I would like to suggest adding a section or a few paragraphs on the physiological importance of the pulsatile hormonal signals. The classic example is the necessary and sufficient roles played by the circhoral GnRH pulsatility. Some earlier models on this topics are listed below. I suggest these refs not because they are my papers, but mostly because they are the papers that I wrote with my Ph.D thesis supervisor, A. Goldbeter, who has worked for years on pulsatile hormonal rhythms in the past. Some of his works should be cited. I suggest to cite one or two out of the list below of which the first one is the most important and best cited.
Li, X.Y., and A. Goldbeter, Frequency specificity in intercellular communication. Influence of patterns of periodic signaling on target cell responsiveness, Biophys. J., (1989) 55:125-145.
Li, Y.X., and A. Goldbeter, Pulsatile signaling in intercellular communication: Periodic stimuli are more efficient than random or chaotic signals in a model based on receptor desensitization, Biophys. J. (1992) 61:161-171.
Goldbeter, A., and Y.X. Li, Frequency encoding in intercellular communication, In: Cell to Cell Signaling: From Experiments to Theoretical Models. A. Goldbeter, ed. Academic Press, London, (1989) 415-432.
