Our understanding of the functioning of the brain has grown rapidly over the last decade or two. So has our recognition of the possible role of brain dysfunction in diseases considered earlier to be of peripheral or somatic origin. This culminates naturally in a focus on the nature of the influence of the brain on other systems such as the autonomic, neuroendocrine and immune systems. And we must come full circle and question the nature of the influence of these systems on the function of the brain. Thus, we gain a picture of a complex regulatory interaction, fine tuned in normal...

The first two "Brain Heart Conferences" in Jerusalem in 1978 and 1983 were based upon the common interests of clinically orientated neurologists and cardiologists in the problems of centr'al autonomic control and autonomic disturbances of the cardiovascular system. The relatively slow scientific progress, at least clinically, in this area may be due to the fact that neither cardiologists nor neurologists felt competent in both topics. Furthermore, it has become increasingly difficult to have an overall view of the basic research and its clinical applications in this field. New research...

At the end of September 1984 Dr. M. Velickovi~ and Prof. H. Prechtl with the help of the International Cerebral Palsy Society organized an international conference on "New develop- ments in the assessment of early brain damage" in Bled, Yugo- slavia. I was invited as a speaker at this conference and I went there, curious, but without too much knowledge about the central theme: cerebral palsy. During the conference and a satellite meeting I became impressed by the quality of various contributions and also by the great variety of problems related to the etiology, early diagnosis, management and...

. Aggression research is in a rapid state of development. The accelerating knowledge of neurotransmitter systems in the brain, their behavioural functions and the development of drugs which may specifically affect systems related to attack and defence is fruitfully combined with studies in which basic ethological observation and quantification techniques are used more routinely. Moreover, much of the experimental effort has finally applied some order to the initial chaos which afflicted the various experimental aggression models used in pharmacological, physiological and ethological research....

There was once an old Chinese man working on a hill with a boy. On the plain, near the sea, rested the village, the inhabitants eagerly engaged in their daily activities. Suddenly, the old man noticed that a huge wave, far distant in the sea, was approaching the shore endangering all. The only safe place was the hill. So, he began waving his hands and screaming aloud, to no avail. The villagers were too busy with their own work and paid little heed to the old man, who was considered a bit eccentric. But soon flames were on the hill, the wheat fields ablaze. The old man had resorted to this...