“Electrophysiological techniques applied to study central nervous system – from ionic channels to neuronal networks” was held on June 6-7, 2008 at the conference center of the Medical University of Warsaw.

This conference, the sixth of its kind, was organized by the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Pharmacy. Generally, this conference is hosted by different universities, medical schools and institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Due to the small number of attendees (about 100 in the Warsaw conference), the conference can be coordinated by single scientific teams. The last such conference was organized by the Department of Neurobiology of Lodz University, and the next conference will be organized in 2010 by the Department of Biophysics of Mikołaj Kopernik University.

The purpose of the conference is to integrate and strengthen the environment of Polish neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, biophysicists and clinical physiologists who apply similar techniques to their everyday work; these include recordings of membrane currents, channel currents and membrane potentials. These techniques are also frequently combined with histochemical, pharmacological, immunological and behavioural methods.

The conference was inaugurated by an academic lecture delivered by Professor Hubert Kwieciński, head of the Department of Neurology of the Medical University of Warsaw, entitled “Ionic Channelopathies in Neurology”. The lecture was about genetic, immunologic and transcriptic channelopathies, which are being recognized by clinicians with increasing frequency.

The conference consisted of five sessions:

1. Ionic channels in the biological membranes
2. Electrophysiological methods applied to study membrane receptors
3. Electrophysiology of the motor system
4. Electrophysiology of the biological rhythms
5. Electrophysiology of the higher cognitive functions

This important event included presentations delivered by young scientists. The presentations were also published in electronic form.

Profesor dr hab. med. Paweł Szulczyk
Department of Physiology
The Medical University of Warsaw