This project will support AREADNE 2012 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles, to be held 21-24 June 2012, at the Nomikos Conference Centre, in Santorini, Greece. This will be the fourth conference in the biennial AREADNE series that provides unparalleled opportunities for US students and scientists studying neural ensembles to interact with their international peers and develop long-term professional relationships.
The AREADNE Conference series serves an important role, providing a unique forum in the developing field of neural ensembles where investigators from a wide variety of subfields can exchange ideas and interact in an intensive, focused environment. Under the leadership of the two co-founders who serve as co-chairs, the AREADNE Organizing Committee has successfully run the conference in 2006, 2008, and 2010; the 2012 session will be the fourth. Many novel mechanisms are employed to ensure complete engagement from the speakers and attendees that result not only in successful, invigorating meetings, but in a strengthening of the field. Many cutting-edge and provocative results have been premiered at the AREADNE Conferences this far, a pattern that is expected to continue in the future.
About half of the attendees from previous meetings have been from the United States, and half from Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Across all attendees, one-third are students, one third post-docs or junior faculty, and the remainder senior faculty. Speakers are selected from the world experts in the field, and include one-third women, reflective of the general attendance. The Organizing Committee consists of systems neuroscientists with wide and varied backgrounds. Hybridization within the committee is reflected in the range of invited speakers and thus at the conference itself where cross-disciplinary discussions among attendees, rather than being exceptional, are the norm. Feedback forms from attendees are overwhelmingly positive, including specifically on the aspect of discussion and interaction. The conference proceedings are provided to attendees in printed form and on CD-ROM, and shortly after the end of each meeting, are published on the conference web site. In the 24 months ending on 1 October 2011, more than 3,000 copies have been downloaded from the web site, demonstrating a very broad impact.
The AREADNE 2012 Conference was held as planned 21-24 June 2012. There were 23 invited speakers and 46 presented abstracts. There were 93 total participants from 14 different countries: 44 delegates were from North America, 49 from Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Intellectual Merit: Scientific Highlights AREADNE 2012 continued the same impressive quality and impact of presentations and discussions as seen at the previous three meetings. A few of the talks are summarized below as highlights of the conference. Dr. David Dickman from the Baylor College of Medicine provided exciting new data describing the neural pathway for magnetic sense used by birds for spatial navigation. In particular, he identified specific parts of the inner-ear that can sense the earth's weak magnetic field. More importantly, he recorded from associated neurons that respond to magnetic field strength and possess cosine-tuning to magnetic field orientation. Dr. John O'Keefe from University College London introduced the oscillatory interference model which posits the existence of several theta oscillations at different frequencies leading to interference patterns which can explain properties of place and grid cells. Dr. Michael Hasselmo from Boston University provided experimental evidence for this model to explain the existence of grid cells in entorhinal cortex (EC). By measuring the resonance and oscillatory frequency of cells in EC, his lab found higher frequencies in dorsal as compared with ventral EC which is predicted by the model. Dr. Davi Bock from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Janelia Farm explained how novel technologies can be used to reveal the physiological and anatomical connectivity within microcircuits in cortex. In particular, he is an expert on large-scale electron microscopy and how it can be combined with in vivo calcium imaging of single layers of cortex. Finally, Dr. Sliman Bensmaia from the University of Chicago showed recent results from his lab that calls into question the traditional view that tactile, texture perception is based solely on spatial patterns of activity across a sheet of receptors peripherally and across the cortical sheet in somatosensory cortex. His results indicate that precise temporal patterning in peripheral and cortical neurons provides relevant texture information and that this information is used by the organism to perceive different texture qualities. Goals and Achievements There were three primary goals for AREADNE 2012, all of which were met. The first, to provide a compelling forum for discussing cutting-edge results from the field of neural ensembles, was achieved as can be seen in both the high-profile list of speakers and the sustained attendance with the final session audience at 95 percent of the first session. The second, to enable the development of lasting professional relationships, was fulfilled by the daily schedule that allowed a large fraction of time for one-on-one interaction that supported the numerous, lengthy luncheon discussions, nearly countless discussions during breaks, and the well-attended poster sessions that lasted late into the night each time. The third, to create a world-class scientific venue that offers US researchers exposure to their European and Eastern Mediterranean peers, is supported by the demographics presented above, the many personal comments the organizers received, and the overwhelmingly positive responses on the feedback forms. Broader Impact The conference program book has been made available for free download in as a PDF document from the AREADNE Conferences web site http://areadne.org. In the 12 months prior to 1 May 2013, a total of 1900 copies were downloaded of the program books from all conference years combined.
