The Pineal and Its Hormones in the Control of Reproduction in Mammals*

Clicks: 3
ID: 295444
1980
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #143 of 220 articles by views in endocrine reviews

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 220 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
ONLY A LITTLE over a decade ago, any discussion of the function of the pineal gland included qualifying adjectives such as alleged, supposed, and putative. In the same vein, since it connoted a hormonal function, rather than referring to the pineal as a gland, the phrase pineal organ was usually employed to describe this portion of the epithalamus. However, this is no longer the case, at least in mammals. By the usual criteria in endocrinology, the pineal now fulfills all the qualifications of an organ of internal secretion. Several major discoveries revolutionized ideas concerning the function of the pineal gland. Certainly, as noted frequently in other reviews, the isolation and identification of N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine (melatonin), a pineal hormone, from bovine pineal tissue by Lerner et al. (1, 2) provided a strong impetus for subsequent investigations on this sometimes exasperating organ. At least as important as this discovery, however, were the observations that light and darkness govern both the biosynthetic activity (3, 4) and endocrine capability (5, 6) of the gland. These findings provided the scientific community with a heretofore unknown handle that could be used to exploit and elucidate the functions of the pineal. Indeed, it is my conviction that the one major factor that stymied pineal research until the mid-1960s was the lack of the basic knowledge that the endocrine output of the pineal gland is determined by the photoperiod to which the experimental subjects, be they animals or man, are exposed.
Reference Key
openalex_W2094654195 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Rüssel J. Reiter
Journal endocrine reviews
Year 1980
DOI
10.1210/edrv-1-2-109
URL
https://doi.org/10.1210/edrv-1-2-109
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.