Professor Stefan Kasicki (1947–2024) and his contribution to understanding the neural networks mediating locomotion

Abstract

Stefan Kasicki, born in Łódź in 1947, graduated with a master’s degree from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw in 1972. He began his scientific career at the Nencki Institute while still a student, conducting his master’s research under Zofia Afelt’s supervision in the Laboratory of the Limbic System, headed at the time by Elżbieta Fonberg. Under Afelt’s supervision, he also carried out his PhD research entitled “Coordination of Limb Movements during Symmetric Type of Locomotion in a Cat” (defended in 1979). From the very beginning, he was fascinated by muscle activity during locomotor behavior, which set the stage for his development of methods to record muscle activity and later research on how the brain organizes itself into neural motor systems controlling the circuity of spinal cord central pattern generators (CPGs) for locomotion.