An international meeting entitled Recent Progress in Cerebellar Research is proposed. The gathering will last three days, from November 16-18, 2001, and be held in the Eric P. Newman Center of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri immediately following the Society for Neuroscience Meeting. We will bring together the international community of cerebellar researchers to discuss the current status of the field. Progress in cerebellar physiology has proceeded at a rapid pace, and a meeting to exchange new results and concepts seems timely. This meeting will serve to cross-fertilize efforts between various factions in the field in the understanding of cerebellar function. Washington University has been chosen as a venue because of its central location. Seven sequential panel sessions, each with an organized and moderated discussion period, two plenary lectures reviewing the history of landmark discoveries, and a poster session will be presented over a three-day period to consider the following topics that are important for understanding cerebellar function. 1) The cerebellum as a device for coordination of movement; 2) Relative roles of the cerebellar cortex and nuclei; 3) Parallel fiber beams. What do they do? 4) Climbing fiber inputs to the cerebellum. What is signaled? 5) Cognitive processing by the cerebellum; 6) LTD, LTP and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory; 7) Models of cerebellar function.
