The mission of the OHBM is to promote the field of structural and functional brain mapping. In particular, OHBM emphasizes non-invasive, image-based investigation of the functional organization of the human brain. Trainees travel awards have been in place for the past 5 years. They support travel trainees who are first author on the most highly ranked abstracts. In past years, awardees have given more than 1/3 of all oral presentations at the annual meeting. Trainees include medical students, graduate students, residents in clinical neuroscience (neurology, psychiatry, neurosurgery) and post-doctoral fellows in fields related to human brain mapping. This program has been in effect for 5 years, with remarkable success. Past meetings of OHBM were in: Paris, France, 1995;Boston, MA, 1996;Copenhagen, Denmark, 1997;Montreal, Canada, 1998;Dusseldorf, Germany, 1999;San Antonio, Texas, 2000;Brighton, England, 2001;Sendai, Japan, 2002;and New York, NY, 2003. Upcoming meetings are planned for: Budapest, Hungary, 2004;Toronto Canada, 2005;Florence Italy, 2006;Melbourne Australia 2007;and Chicago, III 2008. This meeting has relevance for the NIMH in the following ways. First, virtually every presentation relates to the function and structure of the human brain, in both health and disease. Second, 1/6 of the scientific program (2 to12 themes) is devoted to the latest methods for image acquisition,analysis and metanalysis, i.e. neuroinformatics. Third, the entire educational program is devoted exclusively to the methods used to study the brain, with a strong emphasis on image anlaysis and other aspects of neuroinformatics.
