But his hosts did not let him see the secret nerve centre of the Chinese armed forces, in the hills west of Beijing.

ECONOMIST: Up to a point

Its flagship project is in Rio de Janeiro, where it has built an operations centre, which it describes as the "nerve centre" of the city.

BBC: How will our future cities look?

So The Speech was eventually delivered at the City nerve centre for financial information company Bloomberg, in front of the video wall in a modern auditorium.

BBC: Is it "The Bloomberg Speech"?

The nerve centre of the base is the operations room.

FORBES: Inside London's Most Exclusive Airport

Americans for Tax Reform is one of the most powerful grass-roots organisations in the Republican coalition, a combination of nerve-centre and morale-booster.

ECONOMIST: The caveman cometh

Sparked by America's liberation of the hawza in Najaf itself, the historic nerve-centre of the world's 170m or so Shias, Lebanese Shias are re-examining their attitudes to clerical power.

ECONOMIST: Lebanon and Iraq

In Diyarbakir, the political nerve-centre of the mainly Kurdish south-east of Turkey, most ordinary Kurds are weary of the bloodshed and say they do not want an independent Kurdish state.

ECONOMIST: Turkey

Dr James Fawcett, from the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair, says that any successful attempt to produce nerve regrowth in humans would probably depend on a combination of treatments, both aimed at breaking down scar tissue and encouraging nerves to sprout.

BBC: Nerve growth success