Without movement, we would be utterly unable to interact with the world. All behaviors, including speech, writing, reaching, grasping, gaze, walking and posture require the coordinated activities of many motor areas. Further, sensory signals provide essential feedback to these motor areas, enabling accurate motor control and motor learning, as well as providing information vital for deciding future behaviors. As a result, understanding the sensorimotor control of even the most basic movements like orienting toward a sudden sound, or reaching to pick up a glass of water is complex. Damage to these sensorimotor pathways can produce a wide range of debilitating neurological disorders including tremor, Parkinson's disease, ataxia, dystonia, and spasticity - all of which markedly decrease quality of life. The Society for the Neural Control of Movement (NCM) is an international community of scientists, clinician-investigators and trainees engaged in research whose common goal is to understand how the brain controls movement and to address the deficits that occur in disease. NCM promotes a broad range of research using interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., neurophysiological, anatomical, molecular, computational, and behavioral), different animal models, and studies of intact subjects and those with neurological disorders. The inaugural NCM Meeting took place in 1991. The success of the society and its annual meeting has led to a continual growth in membership, meeting attendance, and the breadth of scientific content. With support through the NIH, the 2020 NCM meeting will make substantive progress towards furthering three main goals of the society:
Aim 1) Stimulate new research approaches and collaborations among NCM meeting attendees by identifying new topics and appropriate scientists as speakers, Aim 2) continue to increase the gender and ethnic diversity within the NCM leadership and in meeting programing, and Aim 3) promote and support the development of the next generation of motor control researchers by providing financial and career support for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Overall, the unique format of the annual NCM meeting, with its focus on interdisciplinary approaches, discussion, and scientific interaction in an intimate meeting environment, is of immeasurable value to furthering worldwide understanding of how the brain controls movement in both health and disease.
The Neural Control of Movement Society (NCM) will host its 30th annual meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in April, 2020, bringing together several hundred scientists to present and discuss research related to the brain?s control of movement. The meeting covers a broad range of experimental models and modeling approaches, aimed at understanding the neural control of motor behaviors from locomotion, to reaching, to eye movements, to speech. NCM is committed to facilitating trainee attendance at the meeting, and to increasing diversity in terms of gender, underrepresented minorities, and geographical origin, on the podium, in our leadership, and within the NCM society at large.
