This grant is to request five years of support for the annual South East Nerve Net Conference. There are two basic goals of the meeting: to increase communication among neuroscience researchers in this corner of the country and to help in the training of students. This is the only regional general neuroscience conference in the Southeastern United States. It is an excellent means for neuroscientists in the South East to meet and form collaborations. The meeting has traditionally been very student-oriented, with the majority of talks being the first talks that students give at a major conference. We hope to preserve the friendly format for students while making this a large enough meeting to give them exposure to scientists outside of their own institutions. The venue for the meeting rotates between different locations in the South East each year. The meeting has previously been held at three locations in Florida: Whitney Laboratories in St. Augustine, Florida State University in Tallahassee, and University of Florida in Gainesville. In March of 2002, the meeting will be held in Atlanta GA, a site that is more central to the entire South East. It is hoped that this more central location will increase participation from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama to make it the first truly South East-wide Nerve Net Conference. We plan to have the meeting continue to rotate between the three Florida sites and Atlanta unless other universities in the South East express an interest in hosting the meeting. The 18th Annual meeting will be held March 1 and 2, 2002. The general format of the meeting will be: Friday evening there will be a talk by Dr. Thomas Insel of Emory University, followed by a reception. Then all day Saturday there will be 10 minute talks and posters, ending with a keynote address by Dr. George Augustine of Duke University and followed by a conference dinner.
