During the last annual meeting of the Austrian Society for Electron Microscopy it was decided to organize scientific symposia dealing with basic problems of cytology. If possible such symposia should be arranged in cooperation with other scientific societies. We intended to arrange symposia on special fields, to be presented on several aspects by excellent scientists invited. "Neural Transmission" was chosen as a central topic for this first symposium. The subject represents a most rapidly expanding field of research and is of particular interest to morphologists, physiologists, pharmacologists, biochemists and clinicians. We are indebted to all the invited speakers for contributing their interesting papers. I feel bound to