Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Perhaps more than in any other field of medicine, clinical neurology both depends upon and informs the basic sciences.This edition of ACNR provides plenty of illustrations. John Hardy and Melissa Hanson (Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Aging, US) give an authoritative description of the current under-standing of the genetics of Parkinson’s disease: a research area that has blossomed with the advent of molecular genetics but which in turn is asking questions of the movement scientists.

And Roger Barker, editor of the ACNR, summarises the current understanding of the circuitry of the basal ganglia, which builds upon observations from patients with movement disorders, as well as providing a rational framework for their treatment. Dipankar Nandi and Tipu Aziz (Oxford Movement Disorder Group) describe their experience of operating on four patients with multiple sclerosis for tremor, which may depend for its success on accurate pre-surgery tremor evaluation and local field potential recording from deep brain nuclei close to the deep brain stimulation electrode. Wojtek Rakowicz (former fellow of the Neuromuscular Diseases Center,Washington) continues
our series on muscle disorders where Gillian Hall left off (to take up her maternity leave, for which many congratulations!). He describes the clinical features that differentiate biochemical disorders of muscle.

The anatomy section describes the foramen magnum, where our understanding of the anatomy remains inadequate to explain clinical observations made over sixty years ago. And Michael Vloeberghs (Nottingham) illustrates the pragmatic end of clinical science as he describes the issues around setting up a state-of-the-art service for treating children with spasticity. Finally, in our review of the recent clinical neuroscience literature, we highlight a paper on “limbic touch”: a provocative study of a patient with a unique neurological disorder that allows basic issues around sensation and perception to be explored.

The mutual dependence of clinical neurology and neuroscience underlies our decision to add 1600 full members of the British Neuroscience Association to our mailing list, which will bring our total circulation to 4,800 in the UK. Welcome to our new readers! Please tell us what you would like to see in the journal; if you have any advice on potential topics or authors, please let us know.

Alasdair Coles
AdvancesinCNR@aol.com