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 has been made or in which some particularly interesting issues have been raised. The symposium is planned for December 6-9, 1995 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It is the sixth in a series of alternate year conferences, all held at the same site and during the same part of the year. The previous five symposia were in December of 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 1993. The Department of Veterans Affairs has already indicated that it will cosponsor the 1995 symposium and applications have been submitted to the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the American Paralysis Association and the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, all of whom cosponsored the 1993 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 5, 1994, 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 29 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. Student attendance is encouraged and supported. The number of registrants is estimated at 250. The symposium proceedings will be published in book form (as were the previous five symposia), under the editorship of Fredrick J. Seil. There will be a separate symposium immediately following on human spinal cord injury on the morning of 12/10/95, which will be open at no additional cost to attendees of the neural regeneration symposium. The symposium on human spinal cord injury will be supported primarily by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The proceedings of the two symposium will be published together. The long range plan is to hold the neural regeneration symposia regularly on alternate years at the same time of year and in the same location. The program is varied biennially in order to cover the field of neural regeneration in successive symposia. The proposed meeting at Asilomar will have a single session format 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 five symposia.
