This issue of Neuroendocrine Perspectives, Volume 9, begins with a fascinating aspect of neurobiology: the steroid control of vertebrate behavior, in this case aggressive behavior. In the first chapter, Schlinger and Callard, after an extensive historical perspective of the behavioral effects of steroid hormones, review results of their own and others' laboratories on the hormonal basis of individual and sex-related differences in the intensity ofaggressive displays in birds. These studies provide evidence that brain aromatase exerts considerable control over both sex-dependent and individual...

The various congresses on growth hormone (GH) which have been held in Milan since 1967, the Milan Congresses, have witnessed over 25 years the tremendous expansion of a research field that was based initially upon the scarce knowledge of the biological properties of a protein. GH, whose chemical structure had just been identified and a radioimmunoassay developed for its measurement in blood, became in the following years a major area of biological research. The boundaries have since become blurred, as the research area has extended to the physiology and pathology of growth, puberty and...