In the past two decades, enormous strides have been made These tools for exploring brain biochemistry at the cellular in our understanding of the relationships between inflamma- level opened new vistas for understanding brain functioning tion, innate immune responses, adaptive immune responses, and the pathogenesis of human disease. Using these tools, and degenerative human diseases. The developing informa- our laboratory and that of Joseph Rogers in Sun City d- tion has mostly appeared in specialty journals that have dealt onstrated that HLA-DR was strongly expressed on activated only with isolated aspects of these tightly related fields. As microglia. The identification of HLA-DR, a well-known a result, contemporary scientists have had a difficult time leukocyte marker displayed by antigen presenting cells, on finding sources, even in review articles, that provide an these cells vindicated both Hortega and van Furth. The way integrated picture. This volume, by assembling chapters waspaved for many productive investigations exploring the that demonstrate the relationship between these historically properties of microglial cells and their relationship to infl- separated fields, overcomes that difficulty. There are sec- mation and immune responses. This example of a conju- tions on immunology of the nervous system, diseases that tion between a fundamental concept and technical advances result from immunological dysfunction, current therapeutic to establish its validity has been repeated many times since, approaches, and prospects for the future. Overall, it inte- as the chapters in this volume illustrate.
