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BRUSSELS--U.S. neuroscientists may question whether President Bush's declaration of the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain has had a real impact on federal spending for neuroscience research, but the initiative can claim one definite achievement: It has sired a litter of copycat efforts in Europe. Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have all either already launched their own neuro-decades, or are now doing so. And now those efforts have transcended the level of nation-states with the inauguration last week of the European Community's (EC) own "European Decade of Brain Research."
Like its U.S. counterpart, Europe's brain decade has questions of funding hanging over its head. In fact, many European scientists are braced for disappointment in the next few weeks, when the European Commission (the EC's executive) formally submits its request for the EC's next 5-year research budget, due to run from 1994. But that isn't the only thing that bothers European neuroscientists. Some are angry that the main professional organization for Europe's neuroscientists wasn't consulted by the task force of brain research experts that drew up the program. Worse, many neurobiologists are upset by what they see as a too-heavy emphasis on psychiatry and drug development and a failure to...