Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Synapses and Circuits: Formation, Function, and Dysfunction, organized by Drs. Tony Koleske, Yimin Zou, Kristin Scott and A. Kimberley McAllister. The meeting will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico from March 5-8, 2017. A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand the molecular, cellular and activity-based mechanisms that control the formation and maintenance of neural circuits and determine how these mechanisms become compromised in neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Over the past four decades, molecular neuroscientists have identified key molecules and mechanisms that underlie synapse development, activity and stability. Meanwhile, the identification and characterization of different cell types has been transformed by single cell profiling techniques and the study of neuronal circuits has been revolutionized by new optical methods to visualize, map and control circuits in living animals. Finally, there has been an explosion in the ability to identify genes associated with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Increasingly sophisticated animal models are proving useful to understand how dysfunction of affected genes and proteins contributes to disease pathology. Although researchers in all of these disciplines are studying the same fundamental issues, no small highly interactive ?Keystone-style? meetings bring these groups together in the same venue. In the belief that mutually beneficial insights will emerge from discussing each other?s work, this symposium will bring together leaders working on neuronal development, synapse development and plasticity, circuit structure and function, and the study of brain disease.
The study of synapses and neuronal circuits has entered a major new era of discovery: Neuroscientists are beginning to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern the development, function, and plasticity of neuronal circuits and uncover how disruption of these mechanisms contributes to circuit dysfunction in complex human brain disorders. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Synapses and Circuits: Formation, Function, and Dysfunction aims to advance the understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control the formation, maintenance, and plasticity of neural circuits and determine how these mechanisms become compromised in neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. The meeting will bring together leaders studying basic molecular mechanisms of synapse and circuit function, technologists developing new approaches to measure and analyze circuit structure and function, and clinicians studying brain development and disorders in a single intimate highly-interactive meeting.
