- Email: [email protected]
Preface to the New Cortex Book and Media Review Section
PREFACE TO THE NEW CORTEX BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEW SECTION
The explosion of research in cognitive neuroscience in the last 20 years poses new challenges as well as problems for the neuropsychologist of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years ago, neuropsychological questions (at least of the more experimental variety) were the mandate of a relatively small number of academic scientists, mainly from Canada, France, Germany Italy and the U.S.A., who published in a relatively small number of respected, familiar journals. Technological advances have changed all that. The average desktop computer of 2001 has enough computational power to model complex operations of thousands or even millions of simulated neurons. Computing scientists and mathematicians are now tackling neuropsychological questions through simulation and modelling. Imaging techniques like PET, MEG and fMRI are more and more commonplace in the research arena and are allowing for detailed analysis of cerebral function in unlesioned brains. (If you are a fan of these technologies they nicely circumvent Richard Gregory’s concerns about learning electronics by taking pieces out of radios. If you are not, you remain to be convinced that imaging has told us much that detailed analysis of single cases and patient group studies have already revealed). Technology has also made the day-to-day academic enterprise simpler in some ways but more complicated in others. Physical trips to a library to peruse that limited number of favoured journals in neuropsychology are becoming a thing of the past. The modern researcher has access to thousands of publications in an instant, and is bombarded by automatic emails of searches in vast databases of journal contents. The proliferation of journals (electronic and paper) has added yet another straw to the futile search for the needles (signal) amongst the haystacks (noise). This “needle in a haystack” problem is just as acute for those of us training the neuropsychologists of the future. Ten years ago, the neuroanatomy that I managed to learn came from a textbook, a set of 35-mm slides available for viewing 1 hour/week in a classroom filled with formaldehyde fumes from a much-handled human brain. (This latter aid I recommend most highly). Thankfully, strict reliance on 2-dimensional textbooks and slides is no longer compulsory. The three-dimensional structure of the central nervous system is one of the most difficult representations to fully appreciate and encode. Electronic media that are truly interactive for the user can now come to the rescue. The students of the 21st century can manipulate, rotate, highlight and distort 3-dimensional structures and pathways of the central nervous system at their leisure, in the laboratory, at home or via many excellent websites on the World Wide Web (WWW). I would have been grateful if I had had an appropriate review at my disposal when I was setting up my first neuroanatomy tutorials for postgraduate students. Instead I spent many hours struggling with WWW search engines trying to find and interact with much of the excellent wheat hidden in even more not-so-excellent chaff. We would like to take this Cortex, (2001) 37, 9-10
10
Preface
opportunity to call for suggestions of relevant CD-ROMs, video and any other media in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience for review in this journal. However, as with books (see below), we will refrain from publishing reviews which do little more than criticise the appearance or inclusiveness of a website or a CD-ROM. In spite of new opportunities afforded by the Web and electronic publishing and communication, many of us still keep abreast of developments in neuropsychology beyond the narrow remit of the well-dug trench of our own particular research topic through books. But even wading through the sea of edited volumes that appear year after year isn’t as easy as it used to be. I would like to see the reviews sections of our best neuropsychological journals play their own unique reductionist role in this respect. Reviewers for Cortex are encouraged to go beyond the casual retreading of a book’s Table of Contents or superficial recommendations of the volume for “senior undergraduates and researchers in the field alike”. I have written such reviews myself in the past. Instead, we are asking up-and-coming behavioural neuroscientists as well as established researchers to digest the material of their chosen text a little more slowly and deliberately, and to use the precious pages of Cortex to set a particular new work in the context which it deserves. Such pieces can take many shapes, from stinging critiques of content to broad brushstrokes that tell a story about a domain even for those of us who do not rush out to buy the book. In future issues this section may be expanded to include author’s replies, multiple-book reviews and point-counterpoint debates on the latest findings and issues in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience. I am very grateful to the scientists who have already agreed to review material for the coming issues of Cortex. Proposals for future reviews of both books and new media, as well as comments on what you read in this section in future will be most gratefully received by me at [email protected]. David P. Carey Book and New Media Review Editor.
The explosion of research in cognitive neuroscience in the last 20 years poses new challenges as well as problems for the neuropsychologist of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years ago, neuropsychological questions (at least of the more experimental variety) were the mandate of a relatively small number of academic scientists, mainly from Canada, France, Germany Italy and the U.S.A., who published in a relatively small number of respected, familiar journals. Technological advances have changed all that. The average desktop computer of 2001 has enough computational power to model complex operations of thousands or even millions of simulated neurons. Computing scientists and mathematicians are now tackling neuropsychological questions through simulation and modelling. Imaging techniques like PET, MEG and fMRI are more and more commonplace in the research arena and are allowing for detailed analysis of cerebral function in unlesioned brains. (If you are a fan of these technologies they nicely circumvent Richard Gregory’s concerns about learning electronics by taking pieces out of radios. If you are not, you remain to be convinced that imaging has told us much that detailed analysis of single cases and patient group studies have already revealed). Technology has also made the day-to-day academic enterprise simpler in some ways but more complicated in others. Physical trips to a library to peruse that limited number of favoured journals in neuropsychology are becoming a thing of the past. The modern researcher has access to thousands of publications in an instant, and is bombarded by automatic emails of searches in vast databases of journal contents. The proliferation of journals (electronic and paper) has added yet another straw to the futile search for the needles (signal) amongst the haystacks (noise). This “needle in a haystack” problem is just as acute for those of us training the neuropsychologists of the future. Ten years ago, the neuroanatomy that I managed to learn came from a textbook, a set of 35-mm slides available for viewing 1 hour/week in a classroom filled with formaldehyde fumes from a much-handled human brain. (This latter aid I recommend most highly). Thankfully, strict reliance on 2-dimensional textbooks and slides is no longer compulsory. The three-dimensional structure of the central nervous system is one of the most difficult representations to fully appreciate and encode. Electronic media that are truly interactive for the user can now come to the rescue. The students of the 21st century can manipulate, rotate, highlight and distort 3-dimensional structures and pathways of the central nervous system at their leisure, in the laboratory, at home or via many excellent websites on the World Wide Web (WWW). I would have been grateful if I had had an appropriate review at my disposal when I was setting up my first neuroanatomy tutorials for postgraduate students. Instead I spent many hours struggling with WWW search engines trying to find and interact with much of the excellent wheat hidden in even more not-so-excellent chaff. We would like to take this Cortex, (2001) 37, 9-10
10
Preface
opportunity to call for suggestions of relevant CD-ROMs, video and any other media in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience for review in this journal. However, as with books (see below), we will refrain from publishing reviews which do little more than criticise the appearance or inclusiveness of a website or a CD-ROM. In spite of new opportunities afforded by the Web and electronic publishing and communication, many of us still keep abreast of developments in neuropsychology beyond the narrow remit of the well-dug trench of our own particular research topic through books. But even wading through the sea of edited volumes that appear year after year isn’t as easy as it used to be. I would like to see the reviews sections of our best neuropsychological journals play their own unique reductionist role in this respect. Reviewers for Cortex are encouraged to go beyond the casual retreading of a book’s Table of Contents or superficial recommendations of the volume for “senior undergraduates and researchers in the field alike”. I have written such reviews myself in the past. Instead, we are asking up-and-coming behavioural neuroscientists as well as established researchers to digest the material of their chosen text a little more slowly and deliberately, and to use the precious pages of Cortex to set a particular new work in the context which it deserves. Such pieces can take many shapes, from stinging critiques of content to broad brushstrokes that tell a story about a domain even for those of us who do not rush out to buy the book. In future issues this section may be expanded to include author’s replies, multiple-book reviews and point-counterpoint debates on the latest findings and issues in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience. I am very grateful to the scientists who have already agreed to review material for the coming issues of Cortex. Proposals for future reviews of both books and new media, as well as comments on what you read in this section in future will be most gratefully received by me at [email protected]. David P. Carey Book and New Media Review Editor.