| Dear colleagues,
Membership in the ANA has meant a great deal to me personally. I like to think it provides me with a Hebbian* stimulus—affording continual exposure to transformative ideas in clinical neuroscience that improve my own thinking processes and clinical practice. Yet the most meaningful benefit of membership for me has been engagement with the community of academic neurologists and neuroscientists that has formed in and around the ANA. This cohort represents the future of academic neurology, and is most likely to generate the next discoveries that will improve neurological care. Those of you who have played competitive team sports will understand how the diversity of individual players adds strength to the team. Fiona Adler, founder of Actioned.com, has developed theories of team composition that mirror what I see in ANA members: we each bring different backgrounds, skills, and talents to our community. This diversity is what makes the ANA such a strong milieu for interaction and cooperation. A 2017 study between the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Rob Cross, professor of global business at Babson College, found that companies that promoted collaborative working were five times as likely to be high performing. The difference between productive and unproductive collaboration can be summed up in one word: purpose. The ANA has a stated (and lofty) purpose: advancing the goals of academic neurology. The diverse skill set of our membership, the catalyzing role of the ANA for productive collaborations, and our strong sense of purpose will propel our organization, and our field, to even greater therapeutic successes to serve our patients. Warm regards, Justin C. McArthur, MBBS, MPH President, American Neurological Association John W. Griffin Professor of Neurology and Director, Department of Neurology Johns Hopkins Medicine |