The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry Into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System

The Neuropsychology of Anxiety first appeared in 1982 as the first volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, and it quickly established itself as a classic work in the psychology and neuroscience literature. It presented an innovative, and at times controversial, theory of anxiety and the brain systems, especially the septo-hippocampal system, that subserve it.

This completely updated and revised third edition provides a further updated theory of septo hippocampal function combined with an improved understanding of anxiety. The book includes a new chapter on prefrontal cortex integrating frontal and hippocampal views of anxiety, as well as an extensively modified chapter on personality providing a new basis for further developments of Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. In addition, numerous figures have been fully updated and converted to colour to support the text.

This book is essential for postgraduate students and researchers in experimental psychology and neuroscience, as well as for all clinical psychologists and psychiatrists.

Neil McNaughton, University of Otago, Jeffrey A. Gray, Deceased

Neil McNaughton is Professor of Psychology at the University of Otago and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. After a BA (Oxford, 1970), PhD, and 10 years as a Research Associate in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford (with a one-year Royal Society Commonwealth Bursary at the Department of Physiology, UBC, Vancouver), he became a lecturer at Otago in 1982. He has published 200 articles, chapters, and books (H-Index 53). His articles have been cited 13,000 times with a current rate of 800/year; plus 500 citations/year to The Neuropsychology of Anxiety.

Jeffrey Gray had an exceptionally distinguished 40 year career in academic psychology, with permanent posts first at Oxford University and subsequently at the Institute of Psychiatry, where he became head of the Department of Psychology and subsequently an emeritus professor. He had an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and interests, and was especially drawn to big issues that were clinically relevant or conceptually challenging. His ability to move readily between different areas of the discipline, coupled with his capacity for sophisticated theorizing, allowed him to make particularly striking contributions to the understanding of anxiety and of schizophrenia, at levels that range from the molecular to the philosophical. He died aged 69 in April 2004. (Nick Rawlins)