ABSTRACT
The Decade of the Brain (1990-2000) bore witness to exciting developments in the investigation of brainbased disorders of emotional behaviour. These developments centred on: adopting a consensual taxonomy of these disorders; investigating their neural bases; and developing treatment and rehabilitation strategies. A terse summary of these developments, however, easily falls prey to a good news-bad news format. The good news is that our taxonomy is quite adequate; our knowledge of the neural substrates is expanding rapidly. Sadly, our treatment and rehabilitation strategies lag far behind. In our examination of these developments, we will focus on brain-based, specifically neurological disorders of emotional behaviour. Psychiatric disorders with emotional components that have brain bases, such as schizophrenia, as well as emotional reactions to neurological illness, such as depressive reactions to exacerbation of multiple sclerosis, deserve separate treatment. So, too, do primarily neurological disorders that have in part emotional manifestations, such as Huntington’s disease.
