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Guest Editors: Jean-Pierre Timmermans, Albert E. Geerts

During our training in the 1970s or earlier, many of us were told that hepatic nerves were of lesser importance because the liver was sparsely innervated as compared to other organs and because a transplanted liver does well in spite of its absolute denervation. In view of the wealth of new studies that have come out in the past 20 years, the above view can no longer be maintained. The purpose of this special issue of The Anatomical Record is to summarize our current knowledge on hepatic innervation. While the plan to compile this issue was maturing, the news broke that Dr. Kurt Jungermann had passed away. We are all very much indebted to this pioneer in liver research who made major contributions to our current insights into liver innervation and into neural signal propagation.

The current issue of the journal can be subdivided into three parts. The first five articles describe in detail the anatomy and microanatomy of the nervous system in embryonic and adult liver and in the gallbladder. The next seven studies deal with the varied functions of the hepatic nervous system. The last article describes the physiological changes brought about by surgical liver denervation and discusses the implications of these changes following liver transplantation.

Albert Geerts

These articles are provided free online by Wiley-Liss, Inc., the publishers of The Anatomical Record as a service to the scientific community.

Page updated November 4, 2004