Recent years have shown an increased interest in the cognitive and neural basis of emotion in psychiatric and neurological disorders. Indeed, various methods of behavioural and neural measurement of emotional processes are continually being developed and refined, which has led to an explosion of research in this area. This Special Issue of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry brings together timely reviews and new empirical papers regarding the cognitive and neural basis of emotional processing in health and disease, written by renowned researchers in the field. Clinical conditions that are addressed include amygdala damage, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, social phobia, psychopathy and alexithymia.

Schizophrenia is a unique project reflecting the contribution that Robin M. Murray has made to the field of psychiatry over the past 35 years, with a particular focus on the advances that have been made to the understanding and treatment of schizophrenia.

International contributors have been brought together to pay tribute to Robin Murray s work and explore the latest findings in the area. Sections cover:

• neurodevelopment
• neuroscience and pharmacology
• neuroimaging
• genetics
• cognition
• social psychiatry
• treatment.

This book will be essential reading for psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social and basic scientists whose work is related to major mental illness, as well as admirers of the work of Robin Murray.

Recent years have shown an increased interest in the cognitive and neural basis of emotion in psychiatric and neurological disorders. Indeed, various methods of behavioural and neural measurement of emotional processes are continually being developed and refined, which has led to an explosion of research in this area. This Special Issue of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry brings together timely reviews and new empirical papers regarding the cognitive and neural basis of emotional processing in health and disease, written by renowned researchers in the field. Clinical conditions that are addressed include amygdala damage, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, social phobia, psychopathy and alexithymia.

The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience.

First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world.

Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment.

Great advances have been made in recent years towards a better understanding of the healthy brain and the physical basis of psychiatric disorder. This text brings together contributions from leading international authorities to provide a multidisciplinary overview of this area. Its broad coverage ranges from epilepsy and schizophrenia to basal ganglia disorder and brain lesions. In many cases, a clinically oriented chapter is paired with one which describes the basic science which underpins it and considerable attention is given to the impact of the new technologies - structural and functional neuroimaging. In highlighting the basic pathophysiological mechanisms of multifaceted clinical manifestations, this book serves as a practical review of current neuropsychiatry. It should be of interest to clinicians, researchers and students from neuroscience through to neuropsychology and psychiatry.

For millennia, human beings have reported hearing 'voices'. These experiences have been a source of fascination, sometimes because they spoke of revelation, sometimes because they presaged madness and destruction. From Socrates to the Yorkshire Ripper the impact of voices upon human society has been considerable. But after all this time what can we really say about their causes, their meaning and their treatment? In this special issue of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Spence and David have edited a contemporary synthesis of what is known about voices ('auditory verbal hallucinations', AVH). Contributions are drawn from an internationally renowned panel of authors, most of whom contributed to a symposium held in Sheffield, England in September 2002 ('Voices in the Brain: the cognitive neuropsychiatry of auditory verbal hallucinations'). Topics included in this special issue are: a contemporary voice hearer's perspective on voices and their treatment (Cockshutt); a phenomenological-hermeneutic interpretation of the content of 'voice speech' (Bracken, Leudar and Thomas); a review of the evidence for cognitive interventions used to treat AVH in a group setting (Wykes); a structured literature review of evidence for and against 3 cognitive models of AVH (Seal, Aleman and McGuire); a review of the functional neuroimaging literature on AVH and proposed directions for future discovery (Woodruff); the use of 'virtual acoustics' to model hallucinations in healthy subjects in the brain scanner (Hunter); a critique of contrasting cognitive models of the AVH phenomenon (David), an evolutionary account of schizophrenic voices and the place of language in human speciation (Crow); and the phenomenology of a saint who was burned at the stake.