New societies arise and new journals appear when there is a need for them, that is, when the scientific community within a particular field has grown to become large and strong enough to support them. The International Society for Cerebral Blood flow & Metabolism and the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism are no exceptions. At the time of their inception, a new field had been growing for a while. Novel methods had been developed to measure changes in cerebral blood flow and metabolism in animals and man, paving the way for the first studies of functional neuroimaging in humans. Newcomers to the neurosciences may think that functional magnetic resonance imaging was the starting point, but this is not the case. The first fascinating stories of brain function in relation to motor function, language, and cognition in humans were told with methodologies that used radioactive tracers, and consequently publications using positron emission tomography techniques still constitute a substantial part of the Journal's content.
But the Journal has from the beginning been at the frontier not only of methodologies to probe brain blood flow and metabolism. Its authors have unraveled the underlying physiology and pathophysiology. What is the relationship between neuronal activity, metabolic, and vascular changes? How are these complex relationships disturbed by brain diseases such as stroke, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease? The Journal has created bridges from the cells to the systems, from the molecules to the function, from mathematical models to clinical application, from health to disease.
Bench-to-bedside translation is the mantra of modern biomedicine and has always been a mission of the Journal of Cerebral Blood flow & Metabolism. In the last 15 years, optical and magnetic resonance techniques have increasingly contributed and revitalized studies of cerebral circulation and metabolism in experimental animals and in man. This has been reflected in the contents of our Journal, which continues to publish exciting papers reporting novel methods and their findings. With the advent and now wide spread application of advanced in-vivo multiphoton microscopy, this has been extended to the subcellular level. Many articles have become classics cited >1,000 times. These include descriptions of new techniques to study the brain, new models to investigate brain diseases, novel mechanisms of brain blood flow and metabolism regulation and their validation in humans, and highly influential hypotheses. The editors of the Journal have always focused on publishing high-quality papers relevant from a basic scientific, a translational, or a clinical viewpoint. Our authors and reviewers have been instrumental in securing the Journal's continually high standard. That the Journal is still going strong after 30 years is evidence of the excellent quality of contributions made by its authors and reviewers and of the sustained interest in its topics.
The current jubilee issue provides insights into the history and current developments in this area of the neurosciences and within the International Society for Cerebral Blood flow & Metabolism. Leading scientists have contributed concise reviews on the state of the art of the brain blood flow and metabolism field. These reviews demonstrate the progress that has been made throughout the last three decades, and that the Journal and the Society are on top of these dynamic developments. We invite you to join us by submitting your best work to the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. We assure you of a fair and fast handling of your submission. Your work will be highly visible, and in the good company of other excellent articles by preeminent scientists of the field.
Finally, we would like to toast to the scientists who founded this Journal and our Society; to the great editors who proceeded us and who paved the way for the current success of the Journal; and to you, dear authors, because the future belongs to you and the future of the Journal is in your hands.