The field of the neurosciences is one of the most rapidly growing in present biological research. Its molecular aspects are dealt with by the discipline of neurobiochemistry. As the theme of the Mosbacher Colloquium, we chose this term rather than the term "neurochemistry", in order to stress the dynamic biochemical aspects of present molecu- lar neurobiology and to avoid the flavor of being purely descriptive and "static", which is frequently associated with the term neurochem- istry. This appears the more warranted, since the natural products and analytical chemistry phase of discovering...