Brain Research Bulletin is dedicated to the rapid publication of significant research articles and reviews in all areas of the neurosciences. In addition to reports of original research, the journal will also publish general and speculative reviews, topical debates, methodological developments, theoretical articles, articles on the history of neuroscience, and occasional special issues. Published manuscripts should inform about mechanisms and processes of nervous system organisation and function. Only in exceptional circumstances does the journal publish reports entirely related to human or animal performance or behaviour. The editors are committed to maintaining a high quality of all published reports and to a rapid and fair review process. Manuscripts will be subject to a process of anonymous review (the names of authors and their affiliations will be disclosed to the referees only when the review process is complete). Accelerated publication is the goal for all manuscripts. All articles will be published in English.

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting (" Public Access") policy

Elsevier facilitates author response to the NIH voluntary posting request (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy"; see http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm) by posting the peer-reviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, 12 months after formal publication. Upon notification from Elsevier of acceptance, we will ask you to confirm via e-mail (by e-mailing us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com) that your work has received NIH funding and that you intend to respond to the NIH policy request, along with your NIH award number to facilitate processing. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for posting 12 months after formal publication. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly with PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited.

Exceptions: It is the policy of Elsevier that authors need not obtain permission in the following cases only: (1) to use their original figures or tables in their future works; (2) to make copies of their papers for use in their classroom teaching; and (3) to include their papers as part of their dissertations.

Article types

Research reports . The major part of each issue will be comprised of original research reports. Since the goal is to achieve rapid publication of all reports, there will be no separate section of short or rapid communications. Editorial policy will favour conciseness but longer or multi-experiment papers are equally acceptable where appropriate for proper communication of the results.

Reviews . The journal will also consider high quality reviews of a variety of types, both as stand alone articles and as occasional special issues. These may vary from broad, critical, scholarly overviews of key topics in neuroscience, or theoretical developments in diverse areas, to focussed summaries of the current status of quite specific issues or topics of dispute.

Technical articles . Methodological papers will be considered where they contribute a scientific advancement.

History of neuroscience . The journal will also consider articles on historical aspects of neuroscience, which should deal with the scientific contributions and developments in the field and highlight the impact of pioneering studies on modern neuroscience. Articles comprising only historical biographies of early neuroscientists will not be considered. Translations and edits of meaningful early studies, or part of them, not easily accessible to the scientific community, will also be considered, and should be accompanied by a comment that places them in a modern context. For such translations the authors are encouraged to present the initiative in advance to the relevant Section Editor.

Editorials . The journal will publish occasional editorials, addressing specific matters of issue concerning policy, status, and future development of our journal. Editorials are solicited by invitation only.

Editorial correspondence . We welcome letters to the Editor, including scientific correspondence commenting on the methods or interpretation in other published papers, and the occasional requirement for notes of correction.

Authors are encouraged to contact the relevant Section Editors to discuss opportunities for submission of articles that do not fall into the standard categories.

Sections and Section Editors

•Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology
Ian S. Zagon,isz1@psu.edu, Department of Neural & Behavioral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA

•Cognition and Behaviour
Stephen B. Dunnett, dunnettsb@cf.ac.uk, School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Wales, UK

•Development and Regeneration
Andrew D. McClellan, McClellanA@missouri.edu, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA

•Neuroanatomy and Neuropathology
Suzanne Haber, suzanne_haber@urmc.rochester.edu, Department of Morphological and Biomedical Sciences, Medical Faculty, Verona, Italy

•Neurochemistry and Neuropharmacology
E. Sylvester Vizi, esvizi@office.mta.hu, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

•Neuroendocrinology
Greti Aguilera, greti_aguilera@nih.gov, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

•Molecular Neurophysiology and Neurogenetics
Andres Buonanno, buonanno@helix.nih.gov, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD, USA

•Neurophysiology and Computational Neuroscience
Adonis Moschovakis, moschov@med.uoc.gr, Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics, Crete, Greece

•Normal and Pathological Human Brain Function
Pietro Pietrini, pietro.pietrini@bm.med.unipi.it, Institute of Medical Biochemistry, Medical School, Pisa, Italy

Online submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via the Brain Research Bulletin submission system, EES.

If you are uncertain about the suitability or general format of your proposed work for publication in Brain Research Bulletin , authors may contact the relevant Section Editor or the Editor-in-Chief, dunnettsb@cf.ac.uk for advice and guidance.

In preparation for your submission, please note that you will need to have ready the following information, either to enter into the electronic submission process or as files to upload (full details of the requirements for each component are given in the following sections):

•Full title of the manuscript;
•The full names, affiliation, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and any footnote remarks (such as current address, address for correspondence etc) of all author(s). Either initials or full names should be used consistently for the first name, and the full family name should be given as the last name;
•Abstract;
•Acknowledgements;
•Declaration of conflicts of interest;
•Title page file, containing the Manuscript title, and personalised information including Authors names, Affiliations, Contact addresses, Acknowledgements, and a brief statement of any Conflict of interest as it is to appear in the journal;
•Manuscript file, containing the Manuscript title, Abbreviated title, Abstract, Keywords, Body text, Tables, Figure legends and References, but EXCLUDING all personalised information including Authors names, Affiliations, Addresses, and Acknowledgements, and a Declaration of any conflict of interest;
•Separate electronic files of each Figure. Before submitting, it is essential that you refer to the Elsevier Artwork Guidelines: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions and prepare your artwork accordingly;
• Section/Section Editor by whom the manuscript should be considered;
•The names, e-mail addresses, affiliation addresses, and telephone numbers, of up to four potential reviewers;
•A cover letter to the Section Editor.

Once you are ready to submit, go to http://ees.elsevier.com/brb
•Select the "Submit paper" option.
•Follow prompts online. Please note that at each stage of the submission process it is possible to go back a step, save the submission to continue later, or remove/change any information already entered.
•The submission system will generate a PDF file to be used for the reviewing process.
•You will receive confirmation of your submission, and further progress of your paper at every stage of its review period thereafter, via email.

Hardcopy submission of manuscripts is no longer accepted

To facilitate efficient and effective peer review of manuscripts, all manuscripts are now to be submitted electronically. In cases of difficulty operating the electronic process, please contact the Journal Manager, brb@elsevier.com for help and advice.

Authorship

To be identified as an author, the participant should have contributed to the conception and design of the project, drafted substantive portions of the paper or edited or revised same, and taken responsibility for the analysis and conclusions of the paper.

Other participants with less responsibility, for example, those who merely assisted in carrying out the research - should be identified and acknowledged for their contributions.

Anonymous review

In order to promote fairness of the review process, it is the editors' intention to provide anonymous review of all manuscripts. In order to achieve this, the first page and the acknowledgements page will be removed from the manuscripts sent to referees.

If authors wish to maintain anonymity, manuscripts should be written accordingly; i.e. their names should not appear explicitly on the cover page, in the body of the text (e.g., "as we have reported previously [ref]"), nor appear as page headers. Identifying information contained in the names and addresses of authors, acknowledgements and declarations of conflict of interest are not revealed to referees during the review process.

Preparation of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be prepared electronically using an appropriate MS Word compatible word-processing package, formatted for A4 or letter page size, double-spaced throughout with 2.5cm margins on all sides, and using a 12 point font. Text should not be justified, but flush left. Words should not be hyphenated to fit on a line. Pages should be numbered sequentially.

The first page should contain only the title and running head. This page will serve as the cover sheet when the manuscript is sent to referees. The second page should contain the abstract and keywords. References, figure legends and each table should be typed on separate sheets, following the main body of the manuscript.

For purposes of anonymous review, Acknowledgements and Declarations of conflict of interest should not be included in the manuscript. The electronic submission process will request this information to be entered separately.

Research papers should be organised in a standard form with separate numbered Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion sections. Review, Technical and Historical articles should be divided into numbered sections and subsections as appropriate.

In general, there are no specific word lengths for any manuscript. The general principle is that a manuscript can be as long as necessary to communicate clearly and most effectively the scientific message, but should be as short as possible to achieve a crisp and concise presentation of the information without undue repetition, deviation redundancy, or an inappropriately florid style. The Guest Editors of invited manuscripts for special issues may on occasion indicate target page or word lengths.

Title

The title should be concise and free from abbreviations as far as possible. Names of animal species used should be included when appropriate

The title should be in lower case, with only the first word of the title, acronyms and proper names capitalised, in order to ensure proper transcription when indexing (e.g., "NADPH- diaphorase" or "basal nucleus of Meynert"). The running head should not exceed 40 characters including spaces.

Abstract

The abstract should be concise, no longer than 250 words, and should summarise the major findings and conclusions of the study. Abbreviations should be avoided, and, if they are really necessary, they should be spelled out the first time they are used. References to literature should be avoided, as should specification of statistical results (e.g. p values).

Keywords

A list of up to six keywords should be added at the end of the Abstract.

Materials and methods

Drugs and other reagents

The source of all compounds should be identified by the full name of the supplier, city, state/country when each supplier is mentioned first, and only by the name of the supplier in subsequent quotations. The chemical names of any drug should precede the trade name, popular name or abbreviation the first time it occurs. Publication in the journal implies a willingness by the authors to make special materials, including antibodies, amino acids and cell lines, freely available to other scientists for legitimate academic purposes wherever possible. If a reagent was donated, the full name and institution of the donor should be specified. If the reagents (e.g. antibodies) have been prepared in the authors' laboratories, the adopted procedure and characterization should be specified, or reference of previous work related to this should be cited.

Equipment

The source of special equipment should also be identified as above (full name of the supplier, city, state/country) as well as the source of any specialist software used for data collection and/or analysis .

Animals

It is important to define species, strain, sex, age, supplier and number of animals used. For the use of genetically modified animals, the genetic background should be specified. An ethical statement concerning the use of animals should be placed at the beginning of the relevant paragraph. Besides institutional approval, it is required that the work complies with at least one of the following international regulations: NIH Guide for the Use and Care of Laboratory Animals, and/or EC Council Directives.

Human subjects

Details of ethical approvals, consent and recruitment procedures must be given.

Design and statistical analysis

Particular attention needs to be paid to the selection of appropriate analyses of data, and the strategy adopted for data analysis should be clearly indicated in the text in the Materials and Methods section. Be consistent in the use of either parametric or non-parametric tests. When non-parametric tests are used, the reasoning behind this choice should be explained. Pay attention to the logical fallacy of concluding in favour of the null hypothesis. Pay attention to the proper identification and analysis of repeated measures in designed experiments. Where an experiment involves a factorial design, undertake the proper multifactorial analysis - a series of multiple single factor analyses or independent pairwise comparisons are not acceptable. Similarly, use the proper post hoc tests for multiple comparisons to evaluate the locus of significant main effects or interactions - again, multiple independent uncorrected pairwise comparisons are not acceptable. The name of the post-hoc test used for the analysis should be specified.

Processing and analysis of histological material

When presenting in Materials and Methods the processing of tissue, the tissue cutting strategy (cryostat, freezing microtome, vibratome) and eventual embedding (e.g. paraffin embedding) should be clearly specified. The presentation of the procedure should include the thickness of sections, the interval in collecting sections, the number of adjacent series (or the random sampling of sections), etc. If data on histological sections are analysed quantitatively, special care is required to specify in detail the quantitative procedures used, including stereological processes where appropriate. The presentation of data with semi-quantitative scoring alone (e.g. +, ++, etc.) is discouraged, and cannot be subjected to statistical evaluation.

Results

Results can be broken down into subsections for clarity of presentation. The Results should not repeat methodological details (which should instead be specified in Materials and Methods) and should avoid the discussion of the data.

The results of statistical tests should be incorporated in the body of the text, typically in the Results section, rather than in figure legends, and never in the Abstract. When multiple tests are used (or, for example, analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc test), it should be specified in the text to which of the tests does the significance value refer to. Do not include full analysis of variance summary tables, but only summary statistics with test value, degrees of freedom and level of significance. The appropriate form for reporting variance ratios in analyses of variance is, for example, F (2,48)=3.05, p <0.01, with a similar style as appropriate for other statistical tests. Statistical measures of variation in the text, illustrations and tables, (e.g. SD, SEM) should be identified.

Discussion

The discussion should begin with statements of the main findings of the study, highlighting their significance and novelty (this, however, should not repeat the summary presented in the Abstract). The discussion can be broken down into subsections, focusing on particular issues (technical and/or scientific) of the study.

Acknowledgements

The sponsor or grant number should be specified in the Acknowledgements. All who are acknowledged should be informed and agree to be listed.

Conflict of interest

Authors are required to indicate whether there is any financial or other conflict of interest. If none, authors should make a positive statement to the effect that "The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests."

References

Footnotes are not a part of normal scientific reports. Relevant material should be included in the text or in references. Reference citations should only be to published material or manuscripts that are accepted for publication and 'in press'. Other references to manuscripts which are still in preparation or submitted but not yet accepted should be referred to in the text as 'unpublished data' or 'personal communications'.

Citation of literature references in the text should be given at the appropriate places by numbers in square brackets. All references cited in the text should be listed on a separate page(s) at the end of the article, arranged in alphabetical order of first author, and numbered consecutively. All items on the list of references should be cited in the text and, conversely, all references cited in the text must be presented in the list.

Literature references must be complete, including initials and names of all authors, title of paper, abbreviated title of the journal, volume, year, and first and last page numbers of the article (see example 1 below). In cases of doubt, abbreviations of journal titles should comply with the List of Serial Title Word Abbreviations, CIEPS/ISDS, Paris, 1985 (ISBN 2-904938-02-8). References to books should follow the form: initials and names of all authors, title of the book, publisher, city, and year (example 2 below). References to chapters in multi-author books should follow the form: initials and names of all authors, title of the chapter, names and initials of all editors, title of the book, publisher, city, year, and first and last pages of the article (example 3 below).

[1] R.A. Gerren, T.C. Johnson, Changes in sciatic nerve and spinal nerve and spinal cord function induced by a CNS viral infection. Brain Res. Bull. 34 (1994) 79-84.

[2] J.R. Cooper, F.E. Bloom, R.H. Roth, The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1986.

[3] J. Wang, K.S. Bankiewicz, R.J. Plunkett, J. Sheng, D.M. Jacobwitz, Transplantation of microglia reduces experimental parkinsonism in rats, in O. Lindvall, A Bj rklund, H Widner (Eds.), Intracerebral Transplantation in Movement Disorders: Experimental Basis and Clinical Experiences. Restorative Neurology, vol 4, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991, pp. 303-321.

URLs should be included for websites that are relevant to the article.

This journal should be abbreviated as Brain Res. Bull.

Specific conventions

Language Articles must be written in English, with either British or American spelling used consistently throughout. Language and copyediting services are available (at authors' cost), for authors who need assistance before they submit their article for peer review or before it is accepted for publication.

Dimensions and measurements

All dimensions and measurements must be specified in the metric system. Standard nomenclature, abbreviations and symbols will be based on the Vancouver convention. (Refer to the Appendix of Brain Research Bulletin , volume 36, number 1, 1995 and/or to the CBE Style Manual.)

Formulae and equations

All subscripts, superscripts, Greek letters and unusual characters must be clearly identified.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be avoided in the Abstract. In the body of the text, abbreviations should be used sparingly but consistently to enhance readability. Abbreviations should be defined on first use in the body of the text, unless in very common and general usage (e.g. subcutaneous s.c.).

A list of abbreviations can be provided at the end of the first figure legend when multiple anatomical abbreviations are repeated in several figure legends.

Italicisation

In the title, throughout the text and in the figure legends, foreign, in particular Latin and Greek, terms should be italicised (e.g. in vivo, in vitro, in situ, per se, de novo, post mortem). Genes (e.g. c- fos, c- jun, fos-B, myc) and species (e.g. Macaca mulatta, Rana catesbeiana) should also be italicised as illustrated, whereas the protein products of genes (e.g. Fos) should have a leading capital but are not italicised.

Illustrations

In primary research reports, all figures should be original. Figures may be reproduced from previous publications in review or historical articles, in which case, the original reference should be specified in the figure legend. The author is responsible for obtaining the relevant permission for reproduction.

All figures, photomicrographs and digital images should be prepared for reproduction at 100% size., within a rectangular frame to fit within a single or double column width of 84 mm and 174 mm, respectively, and a maximum page height of 226 mm. In the preparation of figures, care should be taken in grouping images or graphs in multi-panel plates rather than single figures, should be presented on a white background, without black edging, and should be cropped to use the maximal space to display the material. The panels of a plate should be accurately aligned, so that the amount of white space between panels is of equal width (0.5 - 1.0 mm). Irregular figures (e.g. electrophysiology traces) should be organised so as to minimise white space between areas sensibly. Photomicrographs should include scale magnification bars within each pane, as appropriate; do not use magnification factors in the figure legends.

All figures should be drawn and lettered using the same fonts and to similar scale. When possible, all lettering should be within the framework of the illustration. Likewise, the key to symbols should be within the framework of charts and graphs, rather than in the figure legend. When preparing graphs or histograms, please include an indication of the variability of the data as well as the mean or median values (e.g. standard error or standard deviation bars for parametric data; scatter plots or interquartile ranges for non-parametric data). Where possible, error bars should be bidirectional in order to facilitate comparison between experimental groups or treatments. Employ a judicious range of shadings and fills to ensure that columns in histograms are easily distinguished between different groups and treatments. Do not use 3-dimensional representations of bars in histograms or plots in graphs, other than when explicitly required to represent three dimensions in the data.

All illustrations should be referred to in the text as figures, and numbered sequentially using Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.), in the order of their first appearance in the text. There should be one unique number for each separate plate or figure, and each will be accompanied by its own figure legend. Panels within figures should be labelled by capital letters (A, B, C, and so on) and referred to in the text by figure number and the same letters (e.g., Fig. 1A, Fig. 2B,C, but Figs 2B; 3 etc.). Each panel should carry a separate letter; do not group multiple panels under single labels, and do not refer to panels in figures by their position (e.g. "top right").

Adjustment of digital images (brightness, contrast, sharpness etc.) can be done if necessary, but this must be specified both in the text (Materials and methods) and in the figure legend. Besides adjustments aimed at increasing the quality of reproduction, no other manipulation of digital images is permitted.

Illustrations involving brain outlines or camera lucida drawings should contain major landmarks for reference to location.

However produced, whether in hardcopy or electronically, all figures will need to be submitted electronically. Guidance on how to prepare and convert your figures into an appropriate format for electronic submission is given at http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions

Colour figures

If together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures, then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in colour on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions [Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in converting colour figures to "grey scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for colour in print), please submit in addition usable black-and-white files corresponding to all the colour illustrations].

Authors should note that a request to revert from full colour to colour only in the electronic publication at the stage of typesetting and proof correction, will require separate editorial agreement, with possible re-review if necessary, and may significantly delay publication of your manuscript.

Tables

Tables must not duplicate material in the text or in illustrations. Each table should have a brief but descriptive heading. Tables do not have separate legends.

The major divisions of a table should be indicated by horizontal rules. Short or abbreviated column heads should be used. Vertical rules should be avoided.

Explanatory matter should be included in footnotes to the table. Footnotes should be indicated in the body of the table in order of their appearance either with the following symbols: * – # **, etc., or with superscript numbers: 1 2 3 etc.

Supplementary files

Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more.

Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file.

Ethical considerations

Submission of a manuscript implies that the authors have given full attention throughout to the ethical aspects of their research.

When human subjects are used, manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement that the experiments were undertaken with the understanding and written consent of each subject, with the approval of the appropriate local ethics committee, and in compliance with national legislation and the Code of Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki). When experimental animals are used, the materials and methods section must clearly indicate that adequate measures were taken to minimise pain or discomfort, and that the experiments were conducted in accordance with international standards on animal welfare as well as being compliant with local and national regulations. Studies are expected to be compliant with minimal standards as defined by the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC) and the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Full details of any anaesthetic or analgesic dose and treatment must be given.

All manuscripts are expected to comply with contemporary standards of ethical practice in scientific publication, regarding such matters as study design and ethical approval, data probity and fabrication, authorship, declaration of conflict of interest, plagiarism and redundant publication. In particular, all manuscripts should:
- be the authors' own original work, which has not been previously published elsewhere;
- reflect the authors' own research and analysis and do so in a truthful and complete manner;
- properly credit the meaningful contributions of co-authors and co-researchers;
- not be submitted to more than one journal for consideration (ensuring it is not under redundant simultaneous peer review);
- be appropriately placed in the context of prior and existing research;
- properly acknowledge potential conflicts of interest.

Moreover all authors are expected to have read and agreed the submitted manuscript, and we require the submitting author to tick the check box accordingly when approving their PDF.

The journal will follow guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In particular, we have been concerned about encountering a growing number of cases of duplicate publication, publication of direct translations, and straight plagiarism of other peoples work or writing, in part or in whole, and without permission or reference to the earlier work. If in any doubt, please discuss acceptable practice with one of the Section Editors, or Editor-in-chief in advance of manuscript submission. The editors will investigate all allegations of misconduct according to the principles outlined in COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

The Editorial Board and Section Editors of Brain Research Bulletin equally accept that there are ethical principles and duties that apply to journals and editors. The editors will follow the Code of Conduct for editors of biomedical journals as published by the Committee on Publication Ethics(COPE). This includes the presence of a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.

Complaints on editorial process. Authors should in the first instance refer any complaints about the handling of their manuscript to the relevant Section Editor. Authors may subsequently address their concerns, with details of the key issues, in writing to the Editor-in-Chief, dunnettsb@cf.ac.uk, who will undertake to investigate the complaint fully and seek to resolve the matter following principles of best scientific and editorial practice. In the case that authors remain unsatisfied with the outcome of that investigation, they may appeal directly to the COPE committee, cope@bmjgroup.com. Please note that the complaints procedure will only consider issues concerning the proper, fair, confidential and unbiased editorial process. The complaints process will not consider judgements about the scientific validity or merit of a manuscript, which remain within the proper domain of the Section Editors and their referees.

Proofs

In order to maintain rapid publication, proofs should be returned within 48 hours of receipt electronically, by email or by fax as appropriate. Corrections to the proofs should be restricted to printer's errors only; other alterations will be charged to the author.

Reprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a pdf offprint for their own use (but not for re-publication, whether electronically or in print). Should they wish, they may opt to receive 50 paper offprints instead.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. If material from other copyrighted works is included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has pre-printed forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford, OX5 1DX, UK, phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier home page.

Disclaimer:

Whilst every effort is made by the publishers and editorial board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appears in this journal, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the publishers, the editorial board and editors and their respective employees, officers and agents accept no responsibility or liability.

Author enquiries

For enquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's homepage at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/brainresbull. You can track accepted articles at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, as well as copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.

For further information contact the Editor-in-Chief, Stephen Dunnett, dunnettsb@cf.ac.uk or the Editorial Assistant, Anne-Marie McGorrian, McGorrianA@cf.ac.uk.