Important advances in the neurosciences related to psychiatry have taken place since Disorders of Brain and Mind (DBM1) first appeared in 1998. The idea of putting together DBM2 slowly crystallized, encouraged by the success of the earlier volume and by the knowledge that we could do it without repeating ourselves or exhausting the subject. Like its predecessor, DBM2 gathers salient examples of advances in neurosciences that have contributed to the understanding of mental processes and psychiatric illness. The formula of pairing chapters covering basic science and clinical aspects of the same subject has been kept whenever possible.

The aim of DBM2 is to include topics of current interest, rather than to provide exhaustive coverage. To reflect recent advances in neurosciences, the genetics of normal and abnormal cognition figure prominently. Imaging also has a central role: functional imaging (fMRI and PET) and its contributions to understanding the normal and abnormal mind are well represented, alongside new directions in structural imaging and the application of neuropathologically sensitive MRI techniques (magnetisation transfer and diffusion) to the study of psychosis. Other pairs of chapters deal with normal and abnormal brain development, consciousness and will, aggression and drug abuse. Advances in the study of dementia are represented by chapters on its early diagnosis and differentiation and on the neurobiology of the tauopathies. The emergent and intriguing neuropathology of mood disorders, the neural substrate of anxiety and experimental models of depression are also covered.