PREFACE TO THE NEW CORTEX BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEW SECTION

The explosion of research in cognitive neuroscience in the last 20 yearsposes new challenges as well as problems for the neuropsychologist of the 21stcentury. Thirty or forty years ago, neuropsychological questions (at least of themore experimental variety) were the mandate of a relatively small number ofacademic 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 of2001 has enough computational power to model complex operations ofthousands or even millions of simulated neurons. Computing scientists andmathematicians are now tackling neuropsychological questions throughsimulation and modelling. Imaging techniques like PET, MEG and fMRI aremore and more commonplace in the research arena and are allowing for detailedanalysis of cerebral function in unlesioned brains. (If you are a fan of thesetechnologies they nicely circumvent Richard Gregory’s concerns about learningelectronics by taking pieces out of radios. If you are not, you remain to beconvinced that imaging has told us much that detailed analysis of single casesand patient group studies have already revealed). Technology has also made theday-to-day academic enterprise simpler in some ways but more complicated inothers. Physical trips to a library to peruse that limited number of favouredjournals in neuropsychology are becoming a thing of the past. The modernresearcher has access to thousands of publications in an instant, and isbombarded by automatic emails of searches in vast databases of journal contents.The proliferation of journals (electronic and paper) has added yet another strawto 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 trainingthe neuropsychologists of the future. Ten years ago, the neuroanatomy that Imanaged to learn came from a textbook, a set of 35-mm slides available forviewing 1 hour/week in a classroom filled with formaldehyde fumes from amuch-handled human brain. (This latter aid I recommend most highly).Thankfully, strict reliance on 2-dimensional textbooks and slides is no longercompulsory. The three-dimensional structure of the central nervous system isone of the most difficult representations to fully appreciate and encode.Electronic media that are truly interactive for the user can now come to therescue. The students of the 21st century can manipulate, rotate, highlight anddistort 3-dimensional structures and pathways of the central nervous system attheir leisure, in the laboratory, at home or via many excellent websites on theWorld Wide Web (WWW). I would have been grateful if I had had anappropriate review at my disposal when I was setting up my first neuroanatomytutorials for postgraduate students. Instead I spent many hours struggling withWWW search engines trying to find and interact with much of the excellentwheat hidden in even more not-so-excellent chaff. We would like to take this

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opportunity to call for suggestions of relevant CD-ROMs, video and any othermedia in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience for review in this journal.However, as with books (see below), we will refrain from publishing reviewswhich do little more than criticise the appearance or inclusiveness of a websiteor a CD-ROM.

In spite of new opportunities afforded by the Web and electronic publishingand communication, many of us still keep abreast of developments inneuropsychology beyond the narrow remit of the well-dug trench of our ownparticular research topic through books. But even wading through the sea ofedited 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 neuropsychologicaljournals play their own unique reductionist role in this respect. Reviewers forCortex are encouraged to go beyond the casual retreading of a book’s Table ofContents or superficial recommendations of the volume for “seniorundergraduates and researchers in the field alike”. I have written such reviewsmyself in the past. Instead, we are asking up-and-coming behaviouralneuroscientists as well as established researchers to digest the material of theirchosen text a little more slowly and deliberately, and to use the precious pagesof Cortex to set a particular new work in the context which it deserves. Suchpieces can take many shapes, from stinging critiques of content to broadbrushstrokes that tell a story about a domain even for those of us who do notrush out to buy the book. In future issues this section may be expanded toinclude author’s replies, multiple-book reviews and point-counterpoint debateson the latest findings and issues in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience.

I am very grateful to the scientists who have already agreed to reviewmaterial for the coming issues of Cortex. Proposals for future reviews of bothbooks and new media, as well as comments on what you read in this section infuture will be most gratefully received by me at d.carey@abdn.ac.uk.

David P. CareyBook and New Media Review Editor.

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