The Guarantors of Brain did not start off as a charity. It was formed as a publication platform for research in neurology. This was the birth of the journal BRAIN in 1878. It was adopted by the Neurological Society of London (UK) but faced financial difficulties and eventually became isolated when the Royal Society of Medicine was formed through merger of several specialist societies. Macmillan was the original publisher.
In 1907, a group of leading neurologists took over the responsibility for the publication of the BRAIN journal which include underwriting the costs. They became the “Guarantors” of the journal and hence the name “Guarantors of Brain”. The journal became the dominant repository of knowledge on the scientific basis of neurology, functioning as more than just a quarterly journal by publishing various books. It didn’t achieve financial security during these early years.
In 1955, Guarantors of Brain became a registered charity. The aim of the charity is to promote teaching, education and research into the science of neurology and related clinical-academic disciplines, or for the furthering or other scientific and charitable purposes. It is funded by profits generated from the publication of the journals BRAIN and Brain Communications, plus books (i.e., Aids to the Examination of the Peripheral Nervous system).
Read more about the history.
The Charity provides financial grants for a variety of events, meetings and study in the field of neuroscience (see Grants). We work in partnership with the Association of British Neurologists for the Brain Clinical Research Fellowship Scheme.
Our latest annual report can be downloaded here.
The journal BRAIN and Brain Communications form the financial backbone of the charity. Both journals are internationally renowned, publishing landmark papers in clinical neurology and translational neuroscience. The journals are published by Oxford University Press (OUP) and BRAIN has been a flagship journal for OUP since 1975.
The Guarantors of Brain has been actively supporting 16-19-year-olds students in pursuing STEM subjects. We worked with In2Science UK in their In2Stem programme to facilitate disadvantaged students studying STEM subjects. Out of the 2175 students supported by In2Stem in 2020-2023, 165 of them were supported by Guarantors of Brain. In a survey conducted by In2Science in May 2024 among GoB scholars in the 2020-2022 cohort (115 scholars), of the 62 scholars who responded, 39 had undertaken an undergraduate course in the field of neuroscience, biomedical Science, biological science or medicine. These figures are very encouraging and we will continue to play a part in supporting young people to pursue the STEM subjects.
The charity has been awarding travel grants since 1999 to support early career researchers in presenting their work at meeting and conferences. Since 2010, we had awarded more than 5000 grants, totally more than £3.6 million. Since 2021 the charity offsets the CO2 emissions by supporting the UK Tree Planting projects set up by Carbon Footprint Ltd.
