Foreword from the First Edition
Neuroanatomy is a nightmare for most medical students. Th e complex array of nuclei,
ganglia, tracts, lobes, Brodmann areas and cortical layers seem to the uninitiated as the
height of useless trivia. My own memory of my neuroanatomy class in medical school is
vivid. Our professor ordered each member of the class to buy a set of colored pencils—the
kind you had in third grade. Each color was coded for particular structures (red for the
caudate, green for the putamen, yellow for the claustrum and burnt sienna for the globus
pallidus). At our senior play, which poked fun at our professors, a beleaguered medical
student was asked to name the components of the basal ganglia. Without knowing what
the structures even were or did, he responded “red, green, yellow, and burnt sienna.”
Almost forty years later, this remains a class joke. Except for the handful of us who went
into neurolog y, neurosurgery, and psychiatry, the basal ganglia to the rest of my class is
just a fading joke from the distant past.
And yet, no one can practice even rudimentary neurolog y without some basic under-
standing of the neuroanatomy. Non-neurologists in particular, many of whom see large
numbers of patients with neurological complaints, have no hope of sorting out common
problems such as headache, dizziness, tiredness, fatigue, sleep disorders, numbness and
tingling, and pain, without a reasonable grasp of how the nervous system is organized.
Despite all of the marvelous advances in neuroscience, genetics, and neuroimaging, the
actual practice of neurolog y, whether it is done by a neurologist or a non-neurologist,
involves localizing the problem. Th e nervous system is just too complicated to skip this
step. Without an organized approach based on a reasonable understanding of functional
neuroanatomy, clinical neurolog y becomes incomprehensible.
In his wonderful book, Neuroanatomy: Draw It to Know It , neurologist Adam Fisch
applies my old neuroanatomy professor’s colored pencil idea in a manner that actually
works, and it’s fun! Over the course of 39 chapters, most of the clinically important neu-
roanatomically important subjects are covered, ranging through the overall organization
of the nervous system, the coverings of the brain, the peripheral nervous system, the spinal
cord, the brainstem, the cerebellum, and the cerebral cortex. It is clear that the book was
written by an experienced neurologist, as the topics are organized in a fashion that illumi-
nates the principle of anatomical pathophysiological correlation, which is the tool with
which neurologists approach clinical problems.
Th is book should be of great interest to all neurologists, neurosurgeons, neurolog y
residents, and students of neurolog y. Others who see patients with neurological com-
plaints, such as internists, emergency physicians and obstetrician-g ynecologists should
also review their neuroanatomy if they wish to provide excellent care to their patients.