Equally, our origins lie in the new findings starting at around the same time concerning the range of neurotransmitters and their pharmacology and the functioning of the nervous system. These have extended since into an accelerating understanding of the brain and its mechanisms which has incorporated many other techniques from the behavioural to the present-day explosion of molecular biology, and led to the breakdown of older and outdated boundaries between different aspects of neuroscience. Clinical research has also developed new techniques, such as the application of functional imaging to the brain and to the mechanisms of action of psychotropic drugs, which for the first time give us a real way into function in the intact human brain, normal and disordered. The field of molecular genetics is moving towards the finding of genes for behaviour, personality and psychiatric disorders. We are beginning slowly to understand the biology of psychiatric disorders.
Basic research feeds the clinical and clinical research feeds back to the basic.
After some time when advance in new drugs was slow, we have seen in the last decade a rapid pace of advance of drug development. An explosion of new drugs from knowledge of the human genome is about to start. The situation already challenges our ability to undertake new clinical trials, still our fundamental tool for the acid test of new drug evaluation. It is this joint linkage of psychiatry and neuroscience which will serve as our keynote theme for our next two years. I am very conscious that I am the first CINP President democratically elected by ballot of the CINP membership.