Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Polish Neuroscience Society we have a great pleasure to welcome you all to Warszawa and the Old University Campus.

This meeting is already the 9th International Congress of the Polish Neuroscience Society and simultaneously it is the First FENS Featured Regional meeting. This is a new initiative of FENS to give support to national societies aiming to strengthen scientific program of their meetings and make them more international and vivid. Especially, FENS offered stipends which enable young scientists from abroad to participate in the meeting.

The Polish Neuroscience Society won the slot to organize such regional meeting. This was a challenge to us as well for FENS, which supported us in shaping scientific and social events. In the next few days you will have the opportunity to experience the effects of our work.

At the meeting we host 59 young stipends holders. Among them there are also young scientists which received stipends from their own national societies.

Young researchers, we hope that your presence and active voices during all scientific events will make this particular meeting a real forum of exchange of scientific experience and new ideas.

We would like to thank the president of FENS Helmut Kettenmann and Eckart Gundelfinger for helping us to construct the scientific program and to invite prominent plenary speakers. Also we would like to thank Meino Gibson from the FENS Office for helping us with management.

This meeting is also different than previous meetings in that, that in partnership with The European DANA Alliance for the Brain (EDAB), we included a lecture for the public (in Polish) aiming to increase interest in brain matters among lay audience. There is also a bilingual exhibition on the History of Neuroscience in Poland which accompanies the Meeting, aimed to show, in particular to the young generation, the beginnings of our presence in the world community of neuroscientists.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all of the members of the local organizing committee who have devoted a huge amount of time and effort to make the present congress a memorable event. We would like also to thank the Rector of the Warsaw University Katarzyna Chalasinska-Macukow and the Minister for Science and Higher Education Barbara Kudrycka. Let us extend our gratitude to all sponsors of the meeting for their generous financial support. It is only with the generous assistance of our sponsors that this event was made possible. In particular our special thanks go to our strategic sponsor Kawa.ska.

We wish you all a successful conference and enjoyable stay in Warszawa.

Jolanta Skangiel-Kramska, President of the Polish Neuroscience Society

Malgorzata Skup, Chairperson of the Organizing Committee