Madrid, 4 March ( EFE).- the brain is the organ of the mind and understanding how it works is know yourself and know the human being as a species, according to neuroscientists, who opt for the year of neuroscience in Spain serves to boost research in this discipline and closer to the citizens.
The Congress declared 2012 as the year of the neuroscience in Spain, a proposal for the Spanish society of neuroscience, whose President, John Lerma, explained to Efe that one of its objectives is that this discipline comes to the streets and make shareholder society of scientific advances that have occurred around the brain.
Has continued, moreover, will serve to make politicians that neuroscience has “good level in our country”, what is “an opportunity that must not be missed”.
There are for this scheduled dozens of events and activities in various cities, many of which will coincide with the week of the knowledge of the brain, a global campaign that is held each year in March (this year begins the 12th and ends 18).
The main, an International Congress in Barcelona in July the European Neuroscience societies Federation, which is expected to meet between 7,000 and 8,000 experts from around the world.
Addition, there will be activities in other cities, in which the relationship between neuroscience and literature, music or magic, memory and neurodegenerative diseases are some of the topics to discuss multiple days that they will celebrate.
In CaixaForum Palma, for example, experts speak of how the brain processes and experiencing the music of memory and the Alzheimer’s; in Toledo, in the library of Castilla-La Mancha, of the olive oil and its benefits to the nervous system and robotics; and in Madrid, at the Complutense, magic and neuroscience.
Modern neuroscience arises in Spain at the end of the 19th century, in the hands of the neuron of Santiago Ramón y theory Cajal.
Since then, a set of disciplines – philosophy, biophysics, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology or psychology – have been integrated under the term neuroscience, whose research provides means to combat, in addition, brain diseases.
For Lerma, the brain is the organ “makes us as we are, that makes us suffer or enjoy” and “understanding our brain we will come to understand us as a species, know why we behave in one way or another or one loves Mozart and Stravinsky not”.
In addition, “only understanding how are in position of designing therapies that prevent or cure brain diseases and relieve the pain of the families who have such bad experience”.
According to the also director of the Institute of Neurosciences of Alicante, Spain has “excellent” neuroscientists, but “now the time to measure this system”, which, it has been riveting, “it cannot be at zero cost”.
On cuts in science and if they will affect this discipline, Lerma said that given the amount – 743 million euros – fears “the worst”; “you can’t attend a diaspora so harmful that it could well go back to the preconstitucionales years”.
For its part, the investigator of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Manuel MartÃn-Loeches, has told that everything is in the brain. “Not only help us understand what we are and where we come from, but where can we go”, said to highlight the importance of knowing in depth.
For this scientist, Cajal advances were “impressive” for its time, and from then until now have emerged a series of technologies that allow to study the human brain alive and doing any mental activity.
Francisco José Rubia, Member of the Royal National Academy of medicine, has stressed that, among others, the neuroscience works to reveal “the mysteries of consciousness, freedom or spirituality”, items that when they can understand entail a profound change in the way of thinking of the human being.
Two people talk during a break in a few days about neuroscience. EFE/file
