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A mid-october afternoon-early evening (around six), standing at the edge of the sea with a salty azur tickling the calves, watching John Harvey's lean frame bouying gently like an elegant breezy catamaran, face and torso upwards, upon each ebullient wave, one was sublimely adrift in the mellow harmony of the place and its especial ambience. Here indeed, on that soft strand, was the very essence of our loyal, beneficial and protective guardian, the Indalo . There, with that warm setting sun upon the sea-wet towel about one's shoulders one was reminded how very close those 'shifting sands of neuroprotection' may well be, and with that the embarrasingly painful realization of our own morbid tendencies. For, during that short hour the lurking enemy of well-being and health, stress , was totally vanquished and with it the expressions of its evil, neurotoxicity and degeneration; for, as with the great struggles of humanity for self-identity, this is an eternal 'kampf' to subdue, perhaps exterminate, the elements of disharmony and destructivity with the felicity of appreciation and creativity. The third Mojacar Meeting, "Neurotoxicology, Degeneration and Protection in Brain Disease States" was the nursery plant of several year's patient sowing that eventually reached fruition during the 15-19th October, 1999.

The notions of neurotoxicology and neurodegeneration ruminated within us for a considerable time before we plunged into the risky business of aligning them into the Disease States. Why risky? Well, the marriage of neurology and psychiatry, despite the fostering-gestalts of Freud , Kraepelin and Bleuler , may well have met the ire of our industrial benefactors although fortunately these most worthy sponsors chose to envisage the long-term benefits, by disregarding the short-term profits. Thus, their faith in the intrepid journeymen of neuroscience remains a font of enterprise. The more so because the erstwhile relationships between neurotoxicology and degeneration, much less the even further one of neuroprotection, are neither ready-made nor straightforward. The first third of the papers introduce the fundamental, destructive phenomena in toxicological processes inherent to being alive. These reviewed the role of cytokines in traumatic brain injury and multiple sclerosis, the neurotoxicological consequences of addiction to abuse substances, in particular cocaine, both for the individual and the neurobiological-behaviour development of its offspring, the toxicological destruction of brain cholinergic systems during the perinatal phase and implications for Alzheimer's disease and oxidative neuropathology. Several papers on neurodegeneration focussed upon imaging studies, toxicological factors, metabotropic glutamate receptors or immune system alterations in schizophrenia. Others on degeneration in the neurologic "Motor overlap syndrome", hereditary versus environmental causation in Parkinson's disease, the chronic excitotoxicity of Huntington's disease, the epidemiology and neurotrophin signalling in Alzheimer's disease, neuronal adaptibility and the perinatal consequences of early life events, and the cognitive defects induced by damage to the nucleus basalis magnucellularis. Still others dwelt on the neurodegenerative propensities of the endogenous cannabinoid system, the drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("Ecstasy") as modulated by ambient temperature, the amphetamine derivatives, as well as prenatal exposure to cocaine whether preclinical or as human neuropathology. The papers endorsing agents of neuroprotection and restoration finally filtered through the maelstrom of destruction and disorder like the first slivers of silver light to give us available and potential neuroprotective agents, methods and strategies in constraining free radical onslaught, like with NMDA receptor antagonists and antiglutamatergic drugs, diverse groups of psychoactive chemical entities including DA agonists, neurotrophic factors and the suppression of the hydroxyl (.OH) radical. As exciting as this bombardment of schemes and concepts, circuits and brain images, diagrams and postulations, tables, figures and revelations undoubtedly will appear - let us try to bear in mind that it is in the articulation of our ongoing love-affair with the brain in all its many diseased manifestations (deformed, deranged, disturbed, disordered, distray, depleted, decrepit or demented) that we may find our collective solace, and perhaps momentarily that being (in its physical condition what one identifies in the mirror, all other variables being equal) which we may refer to as the self-entity.

Anna Sluzewska was born and bred in the proud Polish city of Poznan . Veritably, seeing her in Poznan , one was struck immediately by how indelibly moulded the place and the person were to each other - as indeed they will now be forever. This circumstance is most understandable and fitting as Anna loved her city, her parents, her children, her friends, her people, her dogs (her beasts) - sadly more than she loved herself. By profession, she was a GP and a preclinical neuropharmacologist, but most of all she was a Psychiatrist, and she revelled in that role - for she was so interested in people, all sorts of people. She was so curious about people and their behaviour (be that mundane, bizarre or divine), their ideas, their motivations, their capabilities, their strengths and their weaknesses, their idiosyncracies, idiocies and eccentricities, their lives. Surely she was of the most essential stuff of which we would like to think that psychiatrists are made. Her association with the "Cerebro y Mente nostra" began in Madrid at the Strategies in Brain Disorders Meeting of 1992, where she was part of that inimitable Polish contingent that carried out the now-legendary excursion to the Somosierra Pass to relate and relive the valour of those squadrons of Polish Lancers that stormed the artillery of an army, just so the Emperor Napoleon could get to bed early with his latest mistress. Somewhere she found an interest in the Duke of Wellington and visited those historical sites of Talavera, Fuente D'Onoro, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and Salamanca , and made the cause of Brain Disease studies in Spain her own. Her part in the "Cerebro y Mente" was insidious, invisible and incipient. She was there, but not there. Indeed, here implicitly was the one gift she was so generous with - that of imparting unreservedly her own happy spirit. She left too little of that happiness for Anna. Perhaps she was selected by the Indalo, who knows? Her father told me "Everybody who knew her loved her" - how right he was! We shall all miss her terribly.

Strolling on that darkly-ground, sparse-populated andalusian beach, examining cockle-shells and polished stones, the essential unobstrusive hedonism of another meeting at the Parador de Mojacar was a fortunate reminder of the exquisite benefits that neuroscience has brought to some of us, 'the lucky few'. For once again the outstanding staff of the Parador spoiled us, unashamedly. Diego naturally was always behind the scenes, directing Altman-like (in fact, he was supposed to be on holiday but could not trust that his crazy brain-disordered brood of professors be sufficiently coddled in his absence) a scenario of escalating random-order as dependent (Speakers), independent (Participants), confounding (Organisers), converging (Dinner-venues) and conflicting (slide projectors) variables implacably their maintained a foreplotted course, a cheery word or gest, a man of enviable dignitas , whose auctoritas grows quietly, unobtrusively. "If you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, and blaming it on you, …" Mojacar itself surrendered us even more in the neat, twinkling, charismatic form of the Spanish 'Lancashire Toreador', Jose Luis Cano Rodriguez , the Concejal de Turismo, who enraptured our Participants and Speakers alike with a ballad-rendering voice the envy of Johnny Mathis , and the lovely gifted Marian , who through the goodness-of-her-heart prepared and selected a painting addressed to every single person with the meeting: truly our cups did runneth over, yet again . From all the hustle-and-bustle of lectures, coffee-breaks, lunchs (an antisocial, wicked beast vindictively limited lunch to something like 54 min – bearing in mind the three-plus courses, architected by Isabel and delivered by Antonio ), more lectures, poster sessions, discussions – general, specific and impromptu – and finally the long-drawn dinners irresistibly enlivened by once-lost, new-found Barry Kosofsky , emerged a titan figure from the past, a dim, mist-spun gestalt of legend, mythology-amongst-the-mundane, neither ancient nor comtemporary, more real than the inscrutable Charlie [ Partanna ] , as enigmatic to the curious as Schrödinger's cat, suave as Cary Grant , as glinting of eye as Gable , a heavyweight ( Marchargiano ) to mingle with our Indalo host, born (before Harry Greb died), nourished, bred on the grit of depression and world war – but, most conspicuous in his absence – Chickenman.

Over successive meetings, whether the venue of these conflagrations be Mojacar or Madrid , the concept of the Speaker's Dinner has arisen as the single most essential factor modulating the transient release from the straight-jacketed constraints of professionalism, career-move considerations and the sometimes paranoid, sometimes real, phobia of scientific plagiarism. On this occasion, at the amazingly hospitable and palate-enticing restuarant of "Don Tadeo's of Villarilos", new pinnacles of sumptuous culinary delight and good-humoured bonhomie were reached. Tadeo, a Don of Dons , the gentleman proprietor, gourmet of wondrous sea-food delights, meticulous chef of exquisitely-selected, extraordinarily-pure and freshly-superb ingredients, empathic and consciencious host of each and every guest who is nourished and nutured in an meticulous fairness-of-equality, commander-in-chief of Churchillian magnitude of a doting staff, is a man-for-all-seasons, quiet and unobtrusive yet watchful of the chance turn of every sagging table, the lowered surreptitious glance of each harrassed waiter, the smile or sigh of every fortunate stupefied mortal that found itself in that temple of good grace, food and wine. There waiting for us to celebrate his 35th birthday was Bernard , El Manitas, our philosopher, confidante and artisan, caressing the new Indalo creation with its mysterious troll-like embodiment of degeneration and protective restoration: frightening and redeeming. Bernard was, as always, in his description-defying element: each female breast charged, pounded with the chance proximity to him, each male for the resigned envy of him, of this character larger-than-life, this superlative flirt, tease and entertainer, this purveyor of life's raw materials and opportunities, overflowing with energy, love, electrochemical conductance. Somehow four-and-a-half hours were lost in the ebb following the tiding multitudes of experiences, all in wonderment that the essential loveliness of this life was so easily attained, so happily and spontaneously imparted, so real. And then, we all climbed aboard our coach and left, with Tadeo's sparkling eyes promising new heights of alimentary satisfaction and honest company, to those sweet dreams that bless the meek and mild of heart. God bless you, Don Tadeo, and all who eat with you.

T. Archer R.J. Beninger T.Palomo