The aim of this meeting is to bring together researchers from developmental neurobiology, psychiatric and cognitive genetics and systems neuroscience to foster communication between these usually separate areas. We hope to promote a deeper understanding of the fundamental processes underlying brain wiring and how variation in genes controlling neurodevelopment affects human brain function. There have been exciting and convergent developments in many of these research fields that we feel make such a meeting very timely. These include, for example, the growing understanding of the neurodevelopmental basis of many psychiatric disorders, a major paradigm shift in models of the genetic architecture of disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, the identification of specific risk genes and the establishment of validated animal models for these disorders, the development of physiological and neuroimaging endophenotypes in animals and humans, and an empirical framework that can explain how alterations at the molecular and cellular levels in neuronal microcircuits affect the function of larger networks in ways that have predictable effects on cognition, perception and behavior. The integration of these areas, and parallel advances in adult neurogenesis and stem cell technologies, now offer avenues and tools for the rational design of therapeutics to treat these and other disorders of major clinical, social and economic importance. This will be one of the first meeting of its kind, with the specific goal of bringing together researchers from developmental neurobiology, psychiatric and cognitive genetics and systems neuroscience in order to foster communication between these usually separate areas. More specialized conferences in each of these areas tend not to look across traditional disciplinary boundaries. For example, meetings on the mechanisms of neural development tend not to have any mention of humans, while those on psychiatric genetics have until recently had little input from model organisms or insight into basic neurobiological mechanisms. These fields are changing, however, as recent discoveries and technological advances allow links to be made between them that provide, for the first time, an explanatory framework for the genetics of brain wiring and its relationship to behavior and disease, from model organisms to humans.
This scientific meeting will provide a unique forum for scientists across many disciplines including, neurophysiology, human genetics, neurodevelopment, clinical psychiatry and psychology to present their recent results, exchange ideas and initiate collaborations. This meeting will therefore provide a tremendous opportunity to improve our understanding of socially-devastating neurodevelopmental disorders implicating defects of neuronal connectivity at large such as schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders as well as various forms of mental retardations and learning deficits.
