Introduction: Origins and history of the CNS meetings

Since their offi cial inception in 1992, the annual Computational Neuroscience (CNS) meetings have served as a format for the presentation and discussion of a broad range of research employing theoretical and experimental methods to study the functional organization and operation of an equally broad range of nervous systems. As the CNS meetings have now entered their third decade, this volume as a whole considers how the understanding of several of the subjects consistently highlighted in those meetings has advanced and changed over the last 20 years. Given the infl uence of the CNS meetings on many of this volume's authors, as well as the fi eld of CNS as a whole, we thought it might be appropriate to provide a brief historical perspective and 'back story' on the meeting's origins now more than 20 years ago. This chapter is therefore a narrative and combined personal recollection from the two scientists who worked together to conceive the CNS meetings.