Japan-Germany Symposium on Computational Neuroscience   You may be excited for the something new by a magnified scene by clicking image.   The past year (from April to March) was "A year of Germany in Japan 2005-06". As a part of the related events, RIKEN organized the "Japan-Germany Symposium on Computational Neuroscience" on campus from 2-4 February 2006.   The symposium was attended by researchers from Japanese and German research institutions as well as by five speakers invited from other countries. Thirty German nationals joined the meeting that included twenty-six oral presentations and fifty-three poster presentations on various aspects of computational neuroscience. The energy displayed in the discussion attests to the success of the symposium.   Topics of the invited lecture sessions included temporal modeling of song learning in birds (Dr. S. Seung, MIT) and neural spiking, as well as modeling the expression of neural information expression (Dr. A. Destxehe, CNRS). Dr. Brunel, also of CNRS, introduced an ingenious theoretical analysis of circuit dynamics of neuronal spikes and Dr. Wang from Brandeis University attempted to explain perception in visual cognition with a biologically based model of neural circuit model. Finally, Dr. Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh showed how a Brain Machine Interface device could use neural activity in a monkey's motor cortex to control a robotic arm. In fact, in three days, most of those issues facing computational neuroscientists were addressed.   Many of the symposium's participants gave the even high praise. Organizing similar sessions to enable Japanese and German scientists to gather and exchange ideas related to computational neuroscience would further deepen research cooperation between the nations.