Our history

Our origins

In the 1960s, a new type of interdisciplinary science gained an official name: neuroscience.

Neuroscience first saw the day of light under the name of the ‘Neurosciences Research Program’ or NRP. Founded in 1962, the NRP went on to become the American Society for Neuroscience.

In Britain, meanwhile, the first organisation that could lay claim to being dedicated to neuroscience was the predecessor of the British Neuroscience Association; the Brain Research Association (BRA) formally founded in London in 1968. The BRA shared the ethos of the American NRP, namely to promote multidisciplinarity and collaboration across the brain sciences.

Yet the BRA came from very humble beginnings.

It started as an eclectic group of like-minded scientists – not yet neuroscientists – who would gather at the Black Horse pub in Rathbone Place, London, to discuss topics that cut across different disciplines in brain science.  This “brain discussion group,” sometimes also called the London Neurobiology Discussion Group, was  initiated by four scientists: Steven Rose, John Lagnado, John Dobbing, and Robert Balázs. 

From the mid-1960s the BRA promoted neuroscience in the UK, organizing conferences and workshops, acting as a lobby group, promoting new courses, degrees, centres and chairs in the neurosciences and gradually engaging in the ethical and social implications emerging from this new field of research.  

The first BRA committee, elected in 1968 by postal vote, comprised eight members from different regions of the UK: John B. Cavanagh, Barry A. Cross, John Dobbing, Chris Evans, Edward George Gray, Pat Wall, Ian C. Whitefield, and Oliver L. Zangwill. Derek Richter and Donald MacKay (see The origins of the British Neuroscience Association by Edward Reynolds (2017)). UK representatives on the Central Council of the International Brain Research Organization, should also be acknowledged for their role in formalising the BRA as the first national neuroscience association in the UK.

It wasn’t until 1996 that BRA became the British Neuroscience Association. The linguistic mutation from ‘brain’ to ‘neuroscience’ is an illuminating moment in the history of the BNA (and brain research more broadly) for it reflects the rise of neuroscience in both scientific and popular imaginations. 

(Above text based on article in the 2012 BNA Bulletin, The Legend of the Black Horse, by Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Anne Cooke and Steven Rose)

See further information about the early years of the BNA in the Archive, below.

Trustees

BNA Officers and Trustees from 2017 to present

BNA Officers and Trustees 2014 - 2017

BNA Officers 1968 - 2014

Papers and articles

The origins of the BNA lie in the 1960s, when neursoscence first emerged as a disclipine in its own right. The exact nature and series of events that led to (what was then) to the Brain Research Association are a subject of some discussion, as becomes clear by reading the articles below.

The Legend of the Black Horse, by Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Anne Cooke and Steven Rose
British Neuroscience Association Bulletin, 63 pp 20-21 (2011)

The Legend of the Black Horse (revisited) by Robert Balazs & Edward H. Reynolds 
British Neuroscience Association Bulletin, 70 p28 (2014)

Reply to the Legend of the Black Horse (revisited) by Abi-Rached, JM, SPR Rose, and J Lagnado
British Neuroscience Association Bulletin, 70 p29 (2014)

From brain to neuro: the Brain Research Association and the making of British neuroscience 1965–1996, by JM Abi-Rached
J Hist Neurosci, 21 (2012), pp. 189–213
DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2011.552413

Letter to the Editor and Authors' Response: Reaction to Abi-Rached JM (2012): From Brain to Neuro: The Brain Research Association and the Making of British Neuroscience, 1965–1996. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 21:189–213) by Robert Balazs & Edward H. Reynolds 
J Hist Neurosci, 22 (2013), pp. 199-207
DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2012.750700

Authors' Response: Of Founding Fathers and History by Joelle M. Abi-Rached & Steven P.R. Rose
J Hist Neurosci, 22 (2013), pp. 208-211
DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2012.754270

50 years of neuroscience, by Steven Rose
The Lancet, Volume 385, Issue 9968, 14–20 February 2015, Pages 598–599
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60224-0

The origins of the British Neuroscience Association by E. Reynolds
Neuroscience 367, pp. 10–14. (2017)
doi: 10.1016/J.NEUROSCIENCE.2017.09.057