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JNNP Milestones in Neurology

In 2020, JNNP reached a significant milestone — 100 continuous years of publishing the innovations, medical breakthroughs and trailblazing studies that have made it the go-to journal across the clinical neurosciences. Unlike other journals that increasingly narrow their focus, JNNP continues to be liberal in its coverage across the clinical neurosciences. To mark this prodigious century, JNNP asked its readers to choose the most important or transformative development in neurology, neurosurgery or psychiatry in the past 100 years. The winning milestone was announced in Nov 2021 at a virtual celebratory event. Throughout this year we will present these top ten milestones as voted by our readers, focusing on one a month and highlighting the impact that each of these breakthroughs has had in clinical neuroscience since 1920. We invite you to join us as we commemorate this special anniversary and celebrate a remarkable century of neuroscientific achievement.

JNNP’s Top 10 Milestones

"With discovery, comes further understanding about the triggers to disease, and an appreciation of factors that underly maintenance of brain and mental health. And with such progress, further frontiers that previously seemed impossible, will be realised, from the brain-computer interface through to a regenerating brain". – Professor Matthew Kiernan, former Editor-in-Chief of JNNP

Milestone of the month

Neurotransmission: The discovery of ion channels and the electrical properties of axons Presented by: Professor Matthew Kiernan The fundamental concept that governs the entirety of neuroscience relates to neurotransmission. Neural transmission involving myelinated axons of the human nervous system occurs by means of salutatory conduction, with action potentials advancing between successive nodes of Ranvier. The discovery of ion channels and an understanding of the electrical properties of nerves owes the greatest debt to Hodgkin and Huxley, who synthesised many years of their groundbreaking research dating back to 1938, to create their 1952 classic citation (Hodgkin and Huxley, 1952). On the basis of this landmark manuscript, Hodgkin and Huxley shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1963. The understanding of impulse conduction has spawned developments across all fields of neuroscience, accelerating the clinical neurosciences into a therapeutic era.

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