of 02-093 - a Ne · The proceedings of all conferences, usually in a form of full papers, were published. The Osieczna and Dylizhan proceedings appeared in Russian and those of Liblice

ACTA NEUROBIOL. EXP. 1989, 49: 125-128

Conference report

Bogusiaw ZERNICKI

Department of Neurophysiology, Nencki Institute o f Experimental Biology 3 Pasteur Str., 02-093 Warsaw, Poland

1 present here a short history of the longlasting collaboration in the form of regular conferences of three friendly institutes. The participating units were the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology in Moscow, the neurophysiological laboratories of the Institute of Phy- siology in Prague, and the Department of Neurophysiology of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. These institutes are the members of the Academies of Sciences in their countries.

The first conference was held in 1958 in Osieczna, a small Polish village on a charming lake (Fig. 1). The conference was organized by Jerzy Konorski, the head of the Department of Neurophysiology in the Nencki Institute. The Russian and Czech participants were headed, re- spectively, by Ezras A. Asratyan and Ernest Gutmann.

In principle, the conference was devoted simply to a discussion of the current work of the institutes. The result was a feeling of unity among their teams. However, the leading topic of the meeting has been selected: the central and peripheral mchanisms of instrumental con- ditioning, the problem introduced to physiology of higher nervous acti- vity by J. Konorski and S . Miller in late twenties. The data of the Russian and Polish participants referred mainly to the central aspect of this problem and those of the Czech participants to the peripheral aspect and so the results mutually complemented.

At that time the great majority of workers in the institutes were young people who had begun their scientific work only after the war. Indeed for many of us the conference was the first occasion tor present

our results before a large, highly qualified audience. Thus, the confe- rence also played a role as a school for young scientists. Altogether the atmosphere of the conference was lively and, surprisingly, there was almost no language barrier. I remember that after my talk delivered in broken Russian, there were many relevant questions, several coming from Asratyan. I remember also my long talks in Russian with B. J. Pa- kovich.

Historically, the role of the Osieczna conference was very important. I t initiated not only the close collaboration of the three institutes, but also the neuroscientific collaboration of the Eastern European coun- tries.

In Osieczna it was decided that such conferences would be held every three years; and indeed this unique collaboration has been continued. During the following 30 years, three conferences were held in Dylizhan (a small village in the mountains of the Armenian SSR), three in Liblice (near Prague) and two in Jablonna, near Warsaw (Figs. 2-6, Table I). A longer interval between the third (1964) and the fourth (1972) con- ference was desired by Czech colleagues for non-scientific reasons. After

Conferences of the Three Institutes

Year Place

1958 Osieczna

I1 1961 Liblice

111 1964 Dilizhan

IV 1972 Jabfonna

V 1975 Liblice VI 1978 Dilizhan

VII 1981 Jablonna

VlII 1934 Liblice

IX 1988 Dilizhan --

Tsentral'nye i perifericheskie mechanizmy dvigatel'noj deya- tel'nosti zhivotnykh, E. A. Asratyali (ed.). Izdat. AN SSSR, Moscow, 1960, 360 p. Central and peripheral mechanisms of motor functions, E. Gut- mann and P. Hnik (ed.). Publ. House Czech. Acad. Sci., Prague, 1963, 307 p. Nervnye mechanizmy dvigatel'noj deyatel'nosti, E. A. Asratyan (ed.). Nauka, Moscow, 1966, 488 p. Brain and behavior. E. W. Doty, J. Konorski and B. pernicki (ed.). Acta Neurobiol. Exp. 1973, 33: 669-827 and 1974, 34: 1-214. Brain and behaviour. Activ. Nerv. Sup. 1976, 18: 1-142. For~nirovane i tormozhene uslovnykh refleksov. V. S. Rusinov (ed.). Nauka, Moscow, 1980, 312 p. Mekhanizmy integrativnoj deyatel'nosti mozga. V. S. Rusinov, G. Kh. Merzhanova, M. N. Rusalova and P. V. Simonov (ed.). Nauka, Moscow, 1981, 328 p. Brain and behavior. Acta Neurobiol. Exp. 1981, 41: 515-632 and 1982, 42: 1-113. Brain and behaviour. T. Radil, P. Hnik, S. TuEek and L. Vy- klickf. (ed.) Physiol. Bohemoslov. 1985, 34: (Suppl.) 193 p. Mozg i povedene. To be published in a book form.

death of the first organizers (Gutn~ann died in 1977 but earlier left the country, Konorski died in 1973 and Asratyan in 1981), the conferen- ces were organized by their respective successors, L. Vyklicky (Fig. 2) and T. Radil (Figs. 5 and 6), K. Zielinski (Fig. 5) and B. Zernicki (Figs. 2 and 6), and P. Simonov (Fig. 5).

The profile of the conferences, covering largely the entire work of the institutes, gradually became broader and more varied. The ob- vious reason was that the number of workers in the three institutes gradually increased greatly, and moreover, many new fields of research developed, extending the profile of the institutes to all fields of brain research. Starting with the IVth Conference the name of conferences, referring originally to the motor activity, was replaced by the more in- clusive "Brain and behavior" (Table I).

The working language of the first conferences was Russian but with time English became of almost equal importance. An example of the bilingualism and informality of the confere~lces was an amusing custom of A. 'Voronin (the quest froin the Institute of Brain in Moscow) to comment the lectures with a verse in Russian or English. On the last conference in Dylizhan after my talk on unusual behavior of visually deprived cats Voronin said:

"He made a lot of observations After poor kitten's deprivations And he did show that cats with masks Could not resolve some of his tasks, but for some tasks it did not matter: They could resolve them even better."

The proceedings of all conferences, usually in a form of full papers, were published. The Osieczna and Dylizhan proceedings appeared in Russian and those of Liblice and Jablonna in English. The proceedings of five conferences were published in book form and the proceedings of four appeared Sn journals (Table I).

The "Conferences of the Three Institutes" played an important role in the neuroscience of Eastern European countries and greatly contribu- ted to the international collaboration. First of all, they obviously produ- ced close collaboration and friendship between the three institutes, re- sulting in several dozen joint papers in almost all fields of neuroscience. A particular vivid collaboration developed in the field of the electro- physiological correlates of alimentary and defensive conditioning and the physiology of visual and oculomotor systems.

In addition, the conferences facilitated a collaboration between some other laboratories, since in each conference some invited guests also

participated. For example, in Osieczna and in the eighth conference in Liblice was P. G. Kostiuk from Kiev (Fig. 5) and in the fifth conference in Liblice, N. P. Bechtereva from Leningrad. In particular, guests from many Soviet laboratories participated in the two last Dylizhan confe- rences. Occasionally some guests from Western countries were also present. During the fourth Conference in Jablonna we enjoyed the pre- sence of two guests from USA: R. W. Doty and G. Gerstein, both kno- wing Russian (Fig. 2).

Finally, the conferences contributed to the foundation of Intermozg (1972), the organization devoted to promoting the neuroscience in Eastern Europe, to some extent in a manner comparable to the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) in Western Europe. The Intermozg broke some (unfortunately not all) red tape formalities hampering the colla- boration between Eastern Europe laboratories.

However, the ever widening content of the conferences became with time their drawback. Dufing the recent conference in Dylizhan (1988) the majority of participants felt that at present they find it more useful to participate in more specific meetings. Such specific conferences as well as specific schools for young scientists are nowadays quite nume- rous, and some are organized by the members of the three institutes.

Thus, the important and unique history of the "Conferences of Three Institutes", at least in their present form, seems to be closed. They will forever remain in the memory of their participants as scientific and social events of the highest rank. The Osieczna, Dylizhan, Liblice and Jablonna meetings became landmarks in the scientific development of many of us.

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