On September 1^st professor Remigiusz Tarnecki passed away. He committed all of his professional life to the Nencki Institute. He initiated his research work under the guidance of professor Jerzy Konorski when the Institute still operated in Łodź where he conducted research on brain physiology. As a student and long-time colleague of Jerzy Konorski he addressed the functional importance of motor-sensory region of the cerebral cortex for generation of instrumental conditioned responses. By joining the mainstream of research conducted, inter alia, by Lucjan and Irena Stępień, Elżbieta Jankowska and Teresa Górska, he co-proved that this region as well as structures transmitting signals to it are of huge importance for making a trained movement, although they do not participate in planning it. He researched the function of hypothalamus in control of instrumental appetitive reactions under the guidance of Wanda Wyrwicka. In the subsequent years, he carried out, together with his students, his own research on the functions of cerebellum and red nucleus while directing the Afferent Systems Unit for many years.

Remigiusz Tarnecki was one of the first Polish neurophysiologists who used the techniques of brain structures ablation and electrophysiological analysis of brain functions. He was interested in application of electrophysiological methods in clinical diagnostics. He conducted research on responses evoked in different states and also on responses evoked by implanted electrodes. In the 70s he collaborated closely with doc. Eugeniusz Mempel who continued conducting in Poland unique examinations on people who were treated surgically by means of stereotactic method, suffering from epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease, not responding to pharmaceutical treatment. As a result of this collaboration, the electrophysiological methods for diagnostic purposes and post surgery examinations were developed.

Among the interests of professor Tarnecki was biomedical engineering. He was one of the co-authors and co-founders of the Polish Biomedical Engineering Society and later, an active member of the Biomedical Engineering Network BIOMEN created on the initiative of the Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2004. He was also a member of the Polish Society for Neuroscience where he served as a Secretary in 1992-95. We shall remember him as a dedicated researcher, colleague and teacher.

Małgorzata Skup