Olivier Lyon-Caen is a professor at the University Pierre-et-Marie Curie and head of Neurology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris), where he also coordinates the centre for Diseases of the Nervous System.
Professor Etienne Hirsch is a neurobiologist and the associate director of the Research Centre of the Brain and Spine Institute at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. He is the author of La Sclérose en plaque (2003).

In France alone more than 15 million people suffer from one or more brain diseases — and the figure keeps rising. Understanding brain mechanisms has become a major social and public health concern, given the Western world’s ageing population.
In recent years, although some neurological pathologies have benefited from certain therapeutic advances, the fact remains that treatments that actually cure patients are lacking and financial resources remain largely insufficient, in the face of research needs and demands.

This book advocates the development of a “Brain Programme” with a global approach toward the study and treatment of neurological pathologies, while appealing to public support, with firm political backing, in order to make the realisation of such a programme feasible.


• This review of the state of fundamental and clinical research on the brain urges the sharing and fertile crosspollination of knowledge, in a field where each category tends to remain separate.

• A French national colloquium on the state of French and European research will be held following the book’s publication. The colloquium aims to bring together those members of the scientific community who aspire to develop research and to constitute a unique force in the service of patients and of the medical community.