302 EPILOGUE
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for money, and its scientific direc
tor, Seymour S. Kety, to head the intramural program for the NINDB
as well as the NIMH.
Most scientific directors would have made the NINDB research more
biological, and guided the NIMH research in psychoanalytic or socio
logical directions, but from the start Kety chose to make psychiatry
research more biological, and hired neuroscientists on the basis of their
research skills, regardless of the institute with which they would be
affiliated. This is how neuroscience research began at the NIH, in tan
dem with the behavioral sciences, in laboratories that encouraged an
interdisciplinary exchange between the physiological and psychological
study of the brain.
But even as the NINDS grew, split off from the NIMH, and spun off
other institutes (the National Eye Institute, and the National Institute
of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders), it never strayed from
its mission–to reduce the burden of neurological disorders by finding
ways to prevent or to treat these diseases. The intramural division has
always had a steady commitment to clinical investigations. Programs for
neuromuscular diseases and epilepsy were initiated when G. Milton Shy
arrived in 1953 to act as the first intramural clinical director. The neuro
muscular diseases section, now in its fiftieth year and its third generation
of leadership, is still a pioneer in studies of muscle diseases. From 1953
to 1980, epilepsy surgery was a dominating specialty in the clinical pro
gram, and it was later joined by neurosurgery programs that made technical
advances in brain tumor surgery.
In 1968, when stroke research was added to our portfolio, the NINDS
began clinical programs in stroke prevention and treatment that built a
strong foundation for the rapid treatment of acute stroke. Clinical research
continues to identify and test promising experimental stroke therapies.
In basic research, the intramural division encompasses programs in
every important area of neuroscience, investigating neuromechanisms at
the molecular, cellular, and neural network levels. Neurogenetics research
continues to identify single and multiple gene interactions that can cause
common and rare neurological diseases. Imaging programs are develop
ing new techniques and tactics to diagnose and measure disease in the