Problems in neuroscience research

To anyone undertaking laboratory or clinical research in the neurosciences a recent publication by the Wellcome Trust,1 the world's largest biomedical charity, is of great interest. Although specifically aimed at reviewing the quality of neuroscience research in the United Kingdom, an important goal was to identify the problems of neuroscientists, which are certainly typical of those encountered in neuroscience research communities across the globe.

Although everyone is aware of the tremendous financial burden imposed on society by neurological and psychiatric disease, the report usefully quantifies this cost. For example, in the United Kingdom these diseases accounted for 8% of all NHS costs in 1994, representing an estimated cost of £3.4 billion, undoubtedly an underestimate. In the United States the annual economic cost of Alzheimer's disease, depression, and stroke alone has been estimated to be US$174 billion. Not only is this burden, resulting from neurological and psychiatric disorders, set to increase in developed countries where there is steadily increasing longevity, it will also increase in the developing countries, where the shift in the age distribution of the population due to the progressive eradication of communicable diseases will lead to …