Neuroscience and clinical practice: a personal postscript.

Abstract

For such complex endeavours as understanding functions of the nervous system and treating patients with impairments of such functions, a continuous exchange of ideas in mutually understandable language is needed between researchers and clinicians. Neither of them is capable in the long run of doing justice to the scientific aspects of neuroscience and neurology and to the expectation of the patients on his or her own. It should become possible to bridge the gap between caring for patients and a scientific understanding of the mechanisms by which certain therapies work and the measurement of performance and outcome which is important for the credibility of interventions. The scientific approach to neurology has led to remarkable improvements in understanding some of the disease processes and to some valuable new therapies. There is no fundamental contradiction, however, between this approach and the pastoral aspects of medical care.