The purpose of this symposium is to present current work in the broad field of neural regeneration, while highlighting areas in which some notable recent progress or in which some particularly interesting issues have been raised. The symposium is planned for December 11-15, 1991 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It is the fourth in a series of alternate year conferences, all held at the same site and during the same part of the year. The previous three symposia were in December of 1985, 1987 and 1989. The Department of Veterans Affairs has already indicated a desire to co-sponsor the 1991 symposium, and applications have been submitted to the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the American Paralysis Association, all of whom co-sponsored the 1989 symposium with the NIH. The proposed program, which was the product of a meeting of the VA Office of Regeneration Research Programs Advisory Board on August 27 and 28, 1990, includes a keynote speaker, two featured speakers, and six major topic sessions, each with a chairman who will present an introductory overview, plus a total of 30 invited session speakers. In addition, there Will be free communications in the form of posters contributed by symposium registrants. The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to register. The number of registrants is estimated at 250. The symposium proceedings will be published in book form (as were the previous three symposia), under the editorship of Fredrick J. Seil. The long range plan is to hold these symposia regularly on alternate years at the same time of year and in the same location. These meetings will be an alternative or a supplement to the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, where the bulk of the neural regeneration research results are presented. The Society for Neuroscience meeting is organized in multiple simultaneous sessions and has grown to an almost unwieldy size. The proposed meeting at Asilomar will have a single session format, will be dedicated to a specific area of research, and has been organized to allow time for relaxed interchange between investigators, or between seasoned investigators and students, in the form of free afternoons. This format was very successful during the previous three symposia.
