This application seeks support for the 3-day bienniel meeting of the Barany Society, an international organization of vestibular scientists. The proposed meeting will be the Society's first in America in 16 years. This conference is meant to promote interactions between basic and clinical scientists in order to continue the fertile cross-pollination that has allowed the vestibular field to make such great interdisciplinary progress in recent years. Because the continuation of such progress depends strongly on encouraging interaction between the young clinicians and basic scientists, we are requesting support here to allow students, postdocs, and residents to attend the meeting. Those who cannot attend the meeting will benefit from the publication, in a special volume of the Journal of Vestibular Research, of those contributions that exemplify clinical and basic science collaboration especially well and the publication of the program abstracts. We plan to promote scientific interaction in 5 ways. First, there will be 3 plenary sessions in which progress in an area will be discussed from both a basic and clinical science perspective. Second, each plenary session will be concluded by an hour-long discussion period open to the audience. Third, each discussion period will then be followed by an extended (1/2 hour) refreshment break to facilitate continued conversation in informal groups. Fourth, all platform and poster sessions will be organized according to topic so both clinical and basic science perspectives will be heard. Fifth, there will be a debate about the relative promise of two future directions in the restoration of vestibular function; i.e., hair cell regeneration vs. development of a vestibular prosthesis. Younger scientists will have the opportunity to present their own work in either the platform or poster session.
