On 25 May 2011, Dmytro Pavlychko, Levko Lukyanenko, Yuri Palchukovsky and Volodymyr Pylypchuk appealed to President Viktor Yanukovych to establish the Institute of the Brain and tp invite Slyusarchuk to head it because he was threatening to leave Ukraine for intellectual reasons. According to Slyusarchuk, the institute's primary aim would be "to engage specialists, to be active — [to] have the possibility to be a scientist". In Ukrainian: Anatoly Kashpirovsky, whom Slysarchuk called "my idol in the profession", also lobbied for the institute's establishment.
