Since its introduction about sixty years ago, stereotactic and functional neurosurgery has evolved into a fascinating and interdisciplinary endeavor that combines modern neurosurgery, neurobiology, and neuroimaging with innovative diagnostic and treatment strategies. In this collection, acknowledged experts from Europe and North and South America present their scientific and clinical experience in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery for movement disorders and brain tumors. The contributions present a wide range from the beginnings of human stereotactic neurosurgery to the most modern molecular and restorative strategies to treat diseases of the human nervous system. They clearly demonstrate that the discipline is still young and dynamic with alternative and sometimes competing strategies whose evaluation is underway. They also document that operative lesioning techniques such as thalamotomies, though still chosen under certain circumstances, have been succeeded by novel neuromodulation techniques such as deep brain stimulation in the great majority of clinical cases.

The birth of human stereotactic surgery.- Functional neurosurgery in Parkinson's disease: a long journey from destruction over modulation towards restauration.- Improving MRT image quality in patients with movement disorders.- STN Stimulation in general anaesthesia: evidence beyond 'evidence-based medicine'.- The impact of multichannel microelectrode recording (MER) in deep brain stimulation of the basal ganglia.- A comparison between stereotactic targeting methods of the subthalamic nucleus in cases with Parkinson's disease.- Behind the screen: pseudobulbar symptoms after deep brain stimulation.- Psychiatric side effects of bilateral deep brain stimulation for movement disorders.- Active stimulation site of nucleus accumbens deep brain stimulation in obsessive-compulsive disorder is localized in the ventral internal capsule.- Functional neurosurgery for secondary dystonia: indications and long-term results.- Deep brain stimulation of the ventrolateral thalamic base and posterior subthalamic area in dystonic head tremor.- Intra-operative transdural electric stimulation in awake patient: Target refining for motor cortex stimulation.- Restorative strategies for the dopaminergic nigrostriatal projection pathway.- Some recent trends and further promising directions in functional neurosurgery.- Impact of automated hotspot detection for 18FET PET-guided stereotactic biopsy.- Interstitial radiosurgery with Iodine-125 seeds in the treatment of brain metastases, glial tumours, and benign intracranial lesions.