The brain provides a seamless integration of the motor and sensory components of movement. The 50 speakers at the 2001 International Conference on MOVEMENT AND SENSATION in Cairns, Australia, will focus on neural mechanisms that utilize the sensation of movement to modulate its manifestation under normal and pathophysiological conditions. At the cellular level, speakers will describe recent advances in the transducing and integrating characteristics of individual motor and sensory neurons. At the systems and behavioral level, speakers will discuss new work on adaptive sensory perceptions and motor output. New state-of-the-art experimental and integrative (systems) modeling techniques will be a dominant theme throughout the conference, with an emphasis on what can be studied in freely moving subjects, particularly in the human. Gandevia, Proske and Stuart were co-organizers of several previous conferences and co-editors of conference volumes that were major influences in several aspects of movement and sensation, including fatigue (Gandevia, Stuart), kinesthesis (Gandevia, Proske), muscle receptors (Proske), locomotion (Stuart), and respiration (Gandevia). The organizers anticipate that the 2001 Cairns meeting will allow important new concepts to be presented to a diverse audience of 250-300 expected attendees. The four Australian co-organizers are taking primary responsibility for the local arrangements of the meeting, while Stuart is focussing on its international attendance and liaison. The Cairns Convention Center is a first-class, modern facility, with nearby hotels at relatively modest cost for US participants. The meeting is structured to provide maximal interaction between speakers and attendees, with a special emphasis on the needs of pre- and postdoctoral trainees. The poster area will be set up next to the lecture theater. There will be dedicated time to view posters as well as coffee breaks served in the poster area. The beginning of the meeting is timed to allow attendees to fly from Christchurch, New Zealand, at the conclusion of the 34th Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS). The Cairns 2001 meeting will be open to all interested parties and will shortly be advertised widely in the 2001 IUPS program, as well as in mailings and calendars with international distributions like the newsletters of IBRO and the Society for Neuroscience. Gandevia will be the chief editor of the symposium volume to be published by Plenum Press, and Proske and Stuart will be co-editors. We expect that the symposium and its volume will have a wide impact on the field and will be of particular interest to a diverse group of basic and clinical movement and sensation neuroscientists, biomechanists, robotocists, designers of motor prostheses, and clinicians who focus on movement disorders.
| Stuart, Douglas G (2002) Reflections on spinal reflexes. Adv Exp Med Biol 508:249-57 |
| (2002) Sensorimotor control of movement and posture. Proceedings of a conference. Cairns, Australia, September 3-6, 2001. Adv Exp Med Biol 508:1-518 |
