Neuronal-glial Cell Interrelationships / Dahlem Workshop Report Bd.20 (PDF)

need for an interdisciplinary approach to research, although scientifically desirable and laudable, is not easily met by the individual investigator, a statement which I must now qualify lest it be taken as a faint-hearted view of the problems which confront us in this or any other field of disease-orientated re­ search. In recent years the growth and scope of MS research parallels, in fact reflects, that which has occurred more generally concern­ ing research at all levels of complexity into the nature and modes of operation of the nervous systems of different animals. With respect to these developments Cowan (2) has observed that "this has led to the gradual emergence of a new, interdisciplinary ap­ proach to the study of the nervous system which has come to be known as Neuroscience. " At the center of neuroscience stands man striving to comprehend hirnself, not only in terms of the nuts and bolts of his own ner­ vous system and that of lower animals, but perhaps preoccupied most of all with the higher level nervous functions of perception, volition, cognition, and mentation, which characterize his "self. " The investigation of these processes depends ultimately on re­ search on man hirnself and the analysis of these processes in depth often must wait on Nature's own experiments to provide, through disease, the chance anatomical or biochemical lesions which dissect human behavior and expose the residual functions for scientific study.