Neuroscientists from the United States and Cuba gathered at the Hotel Nacional in Havana Oct. 19-23 and took a significant step toward enhancing scientific dialogue between the two countries. Their meeting featured 25 American speakers and a similar number of Cuban presenters, as well as representatives of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, Cuban students, and politicians from both nations.
The purpose of the Havana gathering, organized as a satellite conference to the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Miami Oct. 23-28, was to establish connections that could lead to further scientific exchanges. Organizers envision a program of postdoctoral fellowships in America for young Cuban scientists along with other opportunities for senior U.S. scientists to lecture in Cuba.
Mark M. Rasenick, a physiology and biophysics and psychiatry professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), was coprincipal organizer of the meeting with UIC psychiatry professor Moises F. Gaviria and University of...