The Rat Nervous System

Professor Paxinos is the author of almost 50 books on the structure of the brain of humans and experimental animals, including The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, now in its 7th Edition, which is ranked by Thomson ISI as one of the 50 most cited items in the Web of Science. Dr. Paxinos paved the way for future neuroscience research by being the first to produce a three-dimensional (stereotaxic) framework for placement of electrodes and injections in the brain of experimental animals, which is now used as an international standard. He was a member of the first International Consortium for Brain Mapping, a UCLA based consortium that received the top ranking and was funded by the NIMH led Human Brain Project. Dr. Paxinos has been honored with more than nine distinguished awards throughout his years of research, including: The Warner Brown Memorial Prize (University of California at Berkeley, 1968), The Walter Burfitt Prize (1992), The Award for Excellence in Publishing in Medical Science (Assoc Amer Publishers, 1999), The Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research (2001), The Alexander von Humbolt Foundation Prize (Germany 2004), and more Dr Steve Kassem completed his BSc at the University of Sydney in Neuroscience and Psychology. He then went on to complete his honors year at the Brain and Mind Research Institute, looking into the morphological changes of chronic stress on neurons, glia and gray matter. At the Brain and Mind he published work revealing the composition of gray matter represented by its cellular components, and how changes to these components resulted in concomitant changes in gray matter volume. Subsequently, he went on to complete his PhD, in a dual supervision, at the University of Sydney and the University of NSW, looking into the effects chronic stress and its morphological changes had on learning behaviors and their neural circuits. Kassem was appointed a postdoctoral fellowship to work with Scientia Professor George Paxinos AO, bringing his novel histological and MRI skills to Prof Paxinos' work on visualizing and defining the brain. He has recently completed two books, "Atlas of the Developing Mouse Brain? and "Chemoarchitectonic Atlas of the Rat Brain?, works completed with Prof Paxinos.