Neuroscience Publications

The Neuroscience Publications Department at Barrow Neurological Institute leads the academic publishing industry in author services focused entirely on the neurosciences. We provide editorial and media expertise to support residents, fellows, attending physicians, and researchers in the neurosurgery, neurology, neuroradiology, and neuropsychology departments at Barrow. Our illustrators, animators, graphic artists, and multimedia specialists work closely with authors to create elegant, accurate visual content using the latest industry standards and technology to achieve higher visibility and faster publication. The production team maintains an archive of over 18,000 illustrations, videos, and animations that are available to internal, as well as external, researchers and authors. Our team of medical editors checks manuscripts for logical flow, data consistency, word use, and sentence structure. The editorial coordinators help authors manage their manuscripts from formatting through online submission, peer review, and page proofs.

Neuroscience publications may be reached to discuss manuscript and media projects by email at Neuropub@BarrowNeuro.org or by phone at (602) 406-3593.

Our author services include a wide range of projects managed by highly qualified personnel with extensive experience in their fields of expertise: Animation, Editorial, Graphics, Illustration, Video.

Neuroscience Publications (Neuropub) was established by Dr. Robert F. Spetzler in 1983. As a stipulation of his acceptance of the position at Barrow, he requested funding and support for a publications office to create the BNI Quarterly. The Quarterly was Barrow’s own neurosurgical journal, which ran from 1985 to 2013 and was instrumental in getting the Barrow name and Barrow research out into the world. The fledgling publications office was staffed by Georgia Frederic (editor-in-chief), Peggy Powers (assistant to the editor), and Steven J. Harrison (medical art editor).

Shelley Kick, PhD, joined the department as manager and editor in the 1990s, growing the team and establishing the high academic publications standards for which Neuropub continues to be known. Mark Schornak joined the team as medical illustrator in 1991, shepherding the shift from traditional media (pen and ink, airbrush, cel painting) to digital media as the millennium approached. In the early 2000s, the team added 3D animation and multimedia to its offerings, expanding the department’s media capabilities and output.

In 2014, Mark Schornak took over as manager, ushering in a decade of vision and growth for the team, doubling both the size of the staff and the department’s publication and media productivity. The arrival of Dr. Michael T. Lawton in 2017 brought a focus on educational surgical videos and complex, highly detailed 2D and 3D storytelling. The group added the role of senior technical artist, which was filled by Barrow medical animator and tech wizard Michael Hickman, to oversee the resulting advanced workflow and technology.

The 2020s have brought more technological advancement, including app development, collaborations with the Thurston Innovation Center, and the establishment of the Sonntag Spine Center Virtual Reality Laboratory. This resident-led initiative, which is currently housed in Neuropub, creates virtual- and mixed-reality platforms to augment surgical training at Barrow.

In 2022, Kristen Larson Keil, a longtime Barrow medical illustrator, took on the manager role. The following year, the department moved to a custom-designed office space, which houses its 22 employees and a new $1 million state-of-the-art animation render farm and supercomputer.

Thanks to Dr. Spetzler’s vision and the ongoing support of Barrow leadership, Neuroscience Publications leads the academic publishing industry in author services focused entirely on the neurosciences, providing editorial and media expertise to support residents, fellows, attending physicians, and researchers and advancing the knowledge and practice of medicine through research, education, and innovation.

Editorial

Leading the tradition of excellence in scientific communication at Barrow, the editorial team has an extensive background in medical editing and writing. Our team members hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, journalism, and the life sciences. As highly specialized medical communicators, we serve as authors’ editors to smooth the path to publication of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and books. We provide substantive editing for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure to improve the clarity and readability of manuscripts. Our editorial support continues throughout the life of a manuscript, including after peer review and at page proof to ensure publication of higher-quality manuscripts that will be widely read and cited. We also assist authors with grant and book proposals.

Authors who submit manuscripts through Neuroscience Publications have access to editing and formatting services that include:

Fact-checking
Manuscript formatting
Plagiarism detection
Reference management (EndNote)
Substantive editing
Support from manuscript receipt through peer review, revision, and page proofs

Illustration

Our award-winning illustrators produce artwork for journal articles, books, PowerPoint presentations, videos, animations, and websites. Each holds a graduate degree with emphases in neuroanatomy and visual communication solutions and a certification in medical illustration. This work promotes the Barrow mission, and we are recognized nationally and internationally for our leadership in scientific communication.

As medical artists, the illustrators collaborate with authors to develop illustrations—transforming complex information into beautiful, descriptive images. Authors meet with an illustrator for an overview of the project and work closely with them from the initial image reference and research stage to preliminary sketch approval to the final rendered art. In addition to creating original art, images from our extensive catalog may be tailored to many different applications.

Types of illustrations include:

Anatomical structures
Biological processes
Patient positioning
Surgical devices
Surgical techniques

Animation

Our team of animators solidify neuroscience publication’s place in the industry forefront of medical animation. We create teaching tools for Barrow authors that provide direct control of the content using the latest trends in technology and design principles. Viewers may rotate, move, and hide objects to enhance their understanding of complex concepts, processes, and anatomy. Animators use 2D, 3D, and 3D interactive technology depending on the nature of the communication required.

Animation is highly effective for showing a process in motion that might otherwise require several illustrations to convey. With virtual 3D models, the viewer is guided through 3D space so that difficult spatial relationships and sequential steps can be more authentically represented than with illustrations alone. The animation may be viewed with 3D glasses for stereo depth perception. Three-dimensional models can be accurately created using data from clinical images such as MRIs, CTs, angiograms, laser scans, and photogrammetry. Our animators apply the same technology used in big-screen film productions.

Animation projects include:

Anatomical structures
Medical device demonstrations
Molecular and cellular mechanisms of action
Surgical techniques

Interactive 3D Models

Our animators provide authors the ability to interact directly with an anatomical model in a 3D environment. As with animations, interactive 3D content can be viewed with 3D glasses or with a virtual reality headset in conjunction with an input device, which gives the viewer direct control of how objects are viewed and manipulated.

Graphics

Our graphic production team collaborates with authors to produce helpful and clear medical and scientific graphics for academic publications and presentations. We combine design expertise and technical knowledge to create accurate and sophisticated representations of data that allow readers to easily grasp the authors’ meaning, increasing the likelihood of publication and future citations.

Our designers use the latest digital manipulation software, such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, to format figures according to publishers’ specifications.

Graphic production services include preparing or fine-tuning various types of visual aids for publication:

Clinical images (formatting and labeling)
Charts and graphs
Algorithms
Diagrams
Assist authors with the catalog