Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Conference on Neuronal Circuits APRIL 11 - 14, 2018 Project Summary This proposal seeks support for the meeting on ?Neuronal Circuits? to be held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory April 11 ? 14, 2018. The meeting will assemble leaders in the field, together with junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students, to discuss the latest advances that analyze organization and function of nervous systems on the level of neuronal circuits in a variety of organisms and systems. Computation in neuronal circuits is perhaps the major unresolved problem in biology and provides a missing link between genes and behavior. We believe that the problem of such magnitude requires joint efforts among scientists working on different organisms and systems. Creating such synergy served as a motivation for starting this biannual meeting series. By now, this is a well-established and highly regarded meeting in the community, which has an unusual inter-species flavor and focus on circuit structure and function. By its very nature, research presented in the meeting is highly interdisciplinary as it brings together experimentalists, theorists, and researchers from a range of quantitative disciplines. The meeting will include sessions on sensory transformations, circuit computations, internal states, learning, motor control, and advanced techniques in neural circuits. Each session will be chaired by a leading scientist in the field. Oral presentations will be given by distinguished invited speakers as well as by speakers selected from submitted abstracts by a steering committee comprised of the invited speakers. Selected speakers will include graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty, with the aim of maximal inclusion of young investigators and under-represented individuals. Of special importance are the two poster sessions, where many participants can present their work in an atmosphere conducive to informal discussion. The meeting will be of moderate size and we expect about 250 people to attend, the vast majority of whom will be presenting a poster or talk.
NEURONAL CIRCUITS Project Narrative The human brain is often compared to a computer because of its computational abilities. However, unlike computers, whose operation can be understood using wiring diagrams and logical flowcharts, no similar circuit-level framework for the brain is available. What elementary circuit computations are performed by neurons? How much information does the wiring diagram contain? What other information is necessary to describe behavior? What physiological and genetic methods can provide such information? Traditionally, these questions are addressed in specific organisms and systems. Yet, it is likely that the answers are similar across various organisms. Therefore, researchers working on different organisms must benefit by interacting with each other and exchanging their results. To provide a venue for such interaction and exchange, we propose to hold a meeting entitled Neuronal Circuits at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in April 2018. This meeting will bring together experimentalists working on various systems and organisms, theorists, and researchers from a range of quantitative disciplines to discuss cutting edge approaches and findings in this field.
