Neurosciences Conference*

The Indian Academy of Neurosciences (IAN) has completed 25 years of its establishment and celebrated 2007 as its silver jubilee year. The academic activities of this celebration started last year with the successful organization of the 24th Conference of the IAN at Lucknow. As part of the silver jubilee celebration, four symposia were organized throughout 2007 at Chicago (USA), Lucknow, Gwalior and New Delhi. Taking into account the rapid progress in different areas of neuroscience research, the four-day 'In-ternational Symposium on Advances in Neurosciences' was held at Varanasi. The main theme of the conference was molecular and cellular basis of brain functions and disorders. The conference was attended by about 450 delegates, including 390 from India. The inaugural function was held in the evening of first day and was presided by (BHU) presented a glimpse of diverse areas of neurosciences and elucidated the theme of the conference. P. N. Tandon (National Brain Research Centre, Mane-sar) inaugurated the function and stressed on the need for socio-legal policy planning regarding researches in neurosci-ences, so that advances in the field can be utilized for public interest. This was followed by felicitation of Tandon and M. S. Kanungo (BHU), and presentation of the IAN fellowship and awards. Vijaya-lakshmi Ravindranath (National Brain Research Centre, Manesar) introduced the chief guest, Colin Blakemore (Ox-ford University) who delivered the keynote lecture on the plasticity of the brain. The presentation of scientific papers started from the morning of the first day and continued till the noon of the fourth day. In total, there were 265 presentations , including one keynote lecture, one special lecture, four plenary lectures, two invited lectures, 11 symposia sessions containing 48 papers, eight oral sessions containing 35 papers and 145 posters. In addition, the B. K. Bachhawat Memorial Oration was delivered by P. K. Seth (Bio-tech Park). He spoke on 'Cytochrome P450s: Lab to land' and was presented the lifetime achievement award and citation. The most interesting session was the young scientists' colloquium, wherein 18 papers were presented – six for the Tul-sabai Somani Educational Trust Award and 12 for the D. M. Kar Prize. These presentations were evaluated by a panel of judges and the best presentation was selected for the award. In the symposium session on molecular and cellular basis of aging and Alzhei-mer's disease (AD), Debomoy Lahiri (Indianapolis University, USA) discussed the recently proposed 'LEARn' (Latent Early-Life Associated Regulation) model and explained …