There are three items in this bulletin

• Notice of election (including the ballot paper - you will not receive a paper ballot)
• 41st AGM, Rhodes, Greece (abstract submission deadline extended to May 4th)
• EBBS Special Interest Social at SfN in Chicago

Election
As the Society by-laws require that we have a postal ballot, you are asked to

• select the candidates you wish to support, having read the bio-sketches contained in this bulletin
• print out the first page of this e-mail, deleting or striking through the other names
• put into an envelope and write your name (or membership number) on the back of the envelope
• so that the postmark is no later than May 10th, mail to:
  Professor Verity J Brown
  13 Younger Place
  Strathkinness
  St Andrews
  KY16 9RH
  Fife
  Scotland, UK

Candidate for EBBS President:

There was only one nomination for the Presidential election, and therefore Carmen Sandi is standing unopposed. She will be deemed elected if supported by a majority of the returned ballots.

Carmen Sandi (standing unopposed)

Candidates for EBBS committee membership

(Select up to two candidates by deleting, or striking through, the other names):

There were four nominations for two vacancies on the EBBS committee.

• Professor Nicola Clayton
• Dr Alex Easton
• Dr Mathias Schmidt
• Professor Elzbieta Szelag

BIO- SKETCHES

Professor Carmen Sandi

Carmen Sandi is Professor at the Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where she heads the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics (http://lgc.epfl.ch/). Her lab aims at understanding at both phenomenological and mechanistic levels how stress affects cognitive function and psychopathology. She is interested in the role of individual differences, and more recently on the link between stress and the social brain  particularly with regards to aggression. Before moving to Switzerland, she worked in Madrid (Cajal Institute and UNED), UK (The Open University) and France (INSERM-University of Bordeaux).

She was member of the Programme Committee for the FENS 2008 meeting and organized a Satellite to that meeting, entitled "Cell-cell adhesion mechanisms: From development of synaptic networks to cognitive dysfunction". More recently, she has organized the Conference Understanding Violence: Recent advances in biology, sociology and modeling. She serves in several editorial boards, acting as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Neuroscience, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Frontiers in Neuroscience, and as Editor-in-Chief for the open access journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

She was member of the EBBS executive committee in 1999-2002 and from 2007 of the Swiss Society for Neurosciences council. She was part of the local committee of the EBBS 2003 Meeting organized by Ignacio Morgados team in Barcelona. She has also organized symposia in several EBBS meetings (including the upcoming meeting in Rhodes 2009 entitled Evolutionary neurobiology of social hierarchies: Studies in humans, monkeys and rodents) and co-organized together with Melly Oitzl the 1st EBBS Satellite Meeting on Stress, Brain and Behavior in Trieste 2007.



Professor Nicola Clayton

Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Clare College. She received her undergraduate degree in Zoology at the University of Oxford and her doctorate in animal behaviour at St. Andrews University. In 1995 she moved to the University of California Davis where she gained her first Chair in Animal Behaviour in 2000. She moved back to Cambridge and in 2005 she was appointed to a personal Chair, becoming the first female professorial university teaching officer in her department and one of the youngest female professors in the university. She has 170 publications.
Her expertise lies in the contemporary study of animal cognition, integrating a knowledge of both biology and psychology to introduce new ways of thinking about key issues in comparative cognition. This work has led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, particularly birds, and resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two disparate groups, the apes and the corvids (a family of birds that includes jays, magpies, ravens and crows), and current research examines how corvids can perform similar cognitive operations to the apes given they have a much smaller brain than the apes, and with a strikingly different neuroarchitecture. Clayton has also pioneered new procedures for the experimental study of episodic memory and future planning, which have had a major impact on our understanding not only of animal cognition but also of its relationship to human memory and cognition, and how and when these abilities develop in young children.



Dr Alex Easton

Alex Easton is currently a Senior Lecturer at Durham University in the UK, and a member of the Durham University Neuroscience of Learning and Memory Group. A first degree in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University led to an interest in the neural mechanisms of behaviour and a PhD with Dr David Gaffan at Oxford University in the Department of Experimental Psychology, studying the neural basis of amnesia and in particular the role of the cholinergic basal forebrain. He then moved to Nottingham University working on the neural basis of object memory and the effect of social context on learning before moving to Durham University. Most of his work now focuses on the neural basis of episodic memory in animals, and the dissociation of recall and familiarity systems in the brain. Other research interests (in both animals and humans) include the neural basis of spatial memory, the role of context in learning and memory and the way in which differential outcomes affect learning and memory, collaborating with a number of groups including some at Oxford University (UK) and the University of Murcia (Spain). His work has been published in a number of high profile journals (including Journal of Neuroscience, Cerebral Cortex, Neuropsychologia, European Journal of Neuroscience, Learning and Memory, Hippocampus and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society) and he has also co-edited two books (The Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Behaviour, Psychology Press and Handbook of Episodic Memory, Elsevier).



Dr Mathias Schmidt

Mathias Schmidt is a young postdoc, who has already made significant contributions to the understanding of normal and pathological stress system activity and the interaction of brain function and behaviour. So far he has published 25 scientific articles in high quality, peer reviewed journals. From the beginning of his career he has focused on the impact of acute and chronic stress on the brain and has actively determined the course of multiple projects. As a student, he was accepted as research fellow at the laboratory of Prof. Seymour (Gig) Levine (USA). His achievements during this time led to the acceptance as a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Prof. Ron de Kloet (Netherlands). Following his successful Ph.D. thesis, he was offered a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (Germany). He received a one year postdoctoral grant from the Max Planck Society, and was subsequently appointed principal investigator of the research group Molecular Stress Physiology. In Munich, Mathias Schmidt initiated his own independent line of research, focussing on the behavioural, neuroendocrine and molecular basis of individual stress susceptibility. By using various animal models of stress and stress-related disorders, this new approach is helping to bridge the gap between preclinical and clinical research by unravelling the molecular basis of brain-behaviour interactions. As Dr. Schmidt has spent the majority of his career abroad in different laboratories, he has gained an excellent overview in the field of behavioural brain research and has achieved an outstanding international reputation. He is actively participating in the scientific community, among other things by serving on different scientific committees or organizing symposia at national and international meetings. Further, Mathias Schmidt is fulfilling a number of teaching duties, including the guidance of several Ph.D. students. He has been an active member of the European Brain and Behaviour Society since 2002 and is now enthusiastic to take on more responsibilities by serving on the EBBS committee.



Professor Elzbieta Szelag

Elzbieta Szelag is Professor in Neuroscience and Head of the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. She holds also the Chair in Neurorehabilitation at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology.

She leads an active research group in Warsaw and maintains scientific cooperation with a number of scientists in Poland and in Germany. Her principal research topic is neuropsychological basis of human cognition and neuropsychological rehabilitation. Studies are focussed on temporal aspects of information processing, language, memory, attention, hemispheric asymmetry, child development, normal chronological aging and neurodegeneration. Research involves normal subjects (children and adults, including Polish Centenarians), patients with focal brain damage, aphasia, dementia, cochlear implant users, as well as children who show various language deficits, e.g. aphasia, deafness, stuttering, infantile autism.

She has been awarded several research grants from different institutions, e.g. State Committee of Scientific Research, Foundation of the Polish-German Cooperation, Commission of the European Communities, Ministry of Science and Education, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).

In 1991-93 she was granted Humboldt Research Fellowship and spent two fruitful years in the Institute of Medical Psychology in Munich, where she worked with Ernst Poeppel. After her return to Warsaw, this scientific cooperation has been continued for the last more than 15 years.

Elzbieta Szelag is a co-author of ca. 85 scientific publications, chapters in academic books and articles for a general public. She is also the President of the Ethic Committee at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Expert of the European Commission in Brussels, Member of the Scientific Council at the Nencki Institute and at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Member of the Advisory Board at the Functional Imaging Centre in Warsaw and Member of the Human Science Centre, Ludwig-Maximillians University of Munich.





Special Interest Social, Society for Neuroscience (Chicago, 17-21 October 2009) EBBS, in conjunction with Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Sunday 18th October at 6.30 - 8pm (venue to be confirmed)

BETTER BRAINS: Find out about cognition enhancement and who is doing what. The event will be an opportunity to discuss with clinical, preclinical and industrial scientists current views on whether, how and in what ways brains can be made to function better. The impact of light refreshments will be directly experienced. Guests will include Linda Porrino, Sam Deadwyler, Barbara Sahakian, Steven Potkin, Deanna Barch



Elsevier will assist us in hosting this Special Interest Social at Society for Neuroscience by giving us use of a room they will have booked and stocked with refreshments. An announcement has been placed in the Preliminary Program and the venue will be announced in the final program. We hope to see many of our members there and also to encourage friends to join us.



Rhodes 2009: Abstract submission deadline extended to May 4th

The deadline for submission of abstracts for the 41st EBBS AGM, Rhodes, Greece (September 14th-18th, 2009) is approaching fast but has been extended by a few days to accommodate demand. Nevertheless, we encourage you to submit your abstract as soon as possible and benefit from reduced registration. We look forward to welcoming you and your colleagues to Rhodes. Conference website: http://www.ebbs-rhodes2009.com/



EBBS members should send details of any vacancies to Melly ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) who will put them on the EBBS website.

Committee Members

Frackowiak R., President
Innocenti G., Past-President
Brown V., Secretary
Oitzl M., Treasurer
deGelder B.
Gruart i Masso A.
O 'Mara S.
Stylianopoulou F.
Treves A.
Turlejski K
v. Steinbüchel N.