From neurons to thoughts: exploring the new frontier
Over the last six years, Nature has launched four 'sister' journals
that carry the Nature name. Each has become a leading journal in its respective
field, and encouraged by this success we are now adding Nature Neuroscience
to the family. Why neuroscience, and why now?
One reason is the rapid expansion of the field. A prominent sign of this
is the size and growth of the Society for Neuroscience; over the last decade
its membership has more than doubled, and it is now a worldwide organization
with over 27,000 members. The trend seems likely to continue; President Clinton's
budget request for 1999 includes a large increase for basic research, and
neuroscience has been identified by the Department of Health & Human Services
(which funds NIH) as an area of special promise and significance. Other countries
are also giving high priority to neuroscience research, motivated in part
by the immense costs of mental illness and by the economic implications of
cognitive decline in their growing populations of elderly citizens.
Not only is neuroscience a large field, it is also exceptionally diverse.
The range of questions it seeks to answer is paralleled only by the range
of techniques it employs, from the creation of transgenic animals to functional
brain imaging to the modeling of neural networks by ever-more powerful computers.
This diversity presents a problem; with so many disciplines using different
technologies and speaking different jargon, communication is not always easy.
But there are compelling reasons to make the effort, as modern neuroscience
becomes increasingly interdisciplinary. For instance, molecular and systems
neuroscience are now inextricably related; the phenotypes created by gene
knock-out techniques can often be understood only through a knowledge of the
brain circuits they affect, while systems neuroscientists are becoming increasingly
aware of the enormous power of the tools that molecular biology has placed
at their disposal. Cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists are also paying
increasing attention to systems neuroscience, as physiological data from diverse
species provide new insights into the neural basis of human mental processes.
Perhaps more than any other field of biology, neuroscience still has a
'frontier' feel to it. The vast complexity of the brain represents the ultimate
challenge to molecular and developmental biologists; nevertheless, progress
in this area is rapid, and there is reason to hope that we shall understand
the molecular basis for such fundamental processes as axon guidance and synapse
formation within the foreseeable future. The modification of synaptic strength
may also hold the key to the formation and storage of memories, but the problem
of memory goes deeper than this; cognitive neuroscientists have identified
many different forms of memory, and even if they share the same cellular mechanisms
(which remains to be determined), they have fundamentally different properties,
which must surely arise from the architecture of the different brain systems
involved. Other fundamental questions are still hotly debated; one prominent
example is the extent to which neural information is encoded in the precise
timing of spikes. And the neural basis of higher functions, including perception,
movement and emotion, let alone language and thought, is only beginning to
be explored.
We believe that the scope and promise of the neuroscience research enterprise
represent ample justification for the launch of Nature Neuroscience.
But the sheer size of the field also presents a challenge. In 1997 alone,
the Index Medicus lists over 26,000 papers with "brain" as their subject;
clearly no journal, indeed no reader, can possibly expect to achieve comprehensive
coverage of modern brain research. Rather, our aim is to publish a relatively
small number of papers of exceptional significance and quality, drawn from
all areas of neuroscience, as examples of what seems to us most interesting,
significant, intellectually stimulating, even entertaining. We do not intend
to replace any existing journal, but we believe, based on the advice of many
neuroscientists, that there is a real need for a new forum where different
disciplines can come together and exchange ideas. We hope to provide such
a forum, by presenting the best papers in every discipline from molecular
neurobiology to psychophysics, so that interested readers can get a clearer
picture of the activities of the field as a whole.
Papers in Nature Neuroscience will typically be somewhat longer
than those in Nature itself, but they will still be relatively short.
Busy scientists value brevity as well as clarity, particularly when reading
outside their own immediate area of research, and we aim that our papers should
be clear and accessible to the widest possible range of readers. We shall
not hesitate to remind authors when their own manuscripts fall short in this
respect; we hope that the end will justify the means, and we encourage readers
to let us know how we are doing.
A word about our relationship to Nature is in order. Like our parent
journal, we shall place high priority on rapid editorial decisions and publication.
We shall strive for accessibility to a broad readership, and in particular
we hope that our News and Views section, which is closely modeled on Nature
's, will help to achieve this goal. We shall also be editorially independent
in the sense of having no external editorial board. Instead, editorial decisions
are made by our full-time editorial staff, consulting with outside experts
as we see fit. This is a longstanding policy for both Nature and the
monthly Nature titles; it has served us well over the years, allowing editorial
flexibility and ensuring that the opinions of a particular individual or group
do not dominate editorial policy in any given field.
Despite sharing much in common, the two journals are editorially independent
of each other. Thus, it will be for the authors alone to decide where to submit
their manuscripts, and Nature will not divert papers to Nature Neuroscience
unless the authors explicitly request this. Nature itself will
continue to cover the most significant advances in neuroscience as it has
always done, and it will judge the manuscripts it receives on their merits,
without the involvement of Nature Neuroscience. If, however, a paper
cannot be accepted by Nature, authors are welcome to resubmit to
Nature Neuroscience. Nature will then release the referees' comments
to the editors of Nature Neuroscience, thereby facilitating a rapid
editorial decision.
This first issue provides an illustration of the diversity we hope to achieve.
The Research Articles cover the spectrum from molecules to cognition, and
are arranged in roughly ascending order from low-level to high-level questions.
The Scientific Correspondence section (which is fully peer-reviewed) is intended
for shorter items that are nevertheless of broad interest to the neuroscience
community. The News and Views section is intended to highlight a particular
paper (or group of papers on a single theme) and to put the findings in a
broader context for non-specialist readers. Most will be devoted to papers
appearing in Nature Neuroscience itself, but some (see for instance
page 8) will focus on papers of exceptional significance that appear elsewhere.
We welcome suggestions for such unlinked pieces, and authors need not be shy
about alerting us to their own forthcoming publications in other journals.
We also plan to publish reviews on a regular basis, and again we shall be
happy to consider suggestions and offers. In the near future, we plan to add
Book Reviews and a section for Letters to the editor; the latter may be on
matters arising from our previous publications, or on any other topic of interest
to our readership.
The problems that neuroscience addresses are almost unique in their scope,
and the implications for society are similarly broad. Not only does it hold
the promise of new treatments for mental illness, drug addiction, neurodegeneration,
cognitive decline with age; neuroscience can also speak—as yet, tentatively—to
issues such as education, crime, personality, and to the interplay between
cultural environment and biological nature that gives rise to our own mental
lives. And finally there is the question of how we came to be here at all;
how evolution, that is natural selection acting on sequences of DNA, gave
rise to awareness, emotion, intelligence. These are grand themes, and it is
easy to forget them when preoccupied with planning the next experiment, writing
the next funding application, or for that matter preparing the next issue
of a journal. But we should nevertheless remind ourselves occasionally that
it is the promise of illuminating such questions that makes the nervous system
a uniquely fascinating object of study. Nature Neuroscience looks forward
to capturing some of that fascination in the months and years ahead.
Finally, Nature Neuroscience will be published both on paper and
electronically; those who are reading this in print are invited to visit our
web site (http://neurosci.nature.com), where the text of this entire
issue will be freely available from 1 May. We welcome your feedback, and hope
that you will find Nature Neuroscience an interesting and valuable
source of information.
