This project will support AREADNE 2010 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles, to be held 17-20 June 2010, at the Nomikos Conference Centre, in Santorini, Greece. This is the third conference in the biennial AREADNE series that provides unparallelled opportunities for US students and scientists studying neural ensembles to interact with their international peers and develop long-term professional relationships.
The AREADNE Conference series serves an important role, providing a unique forum in the developing field of neural ensembles where investigators from a wide variety of subfields can exchange ideas and interact in an intensive, focused environment. Under the leadership of the two co-founders who serve as co-chairs, the AREADNE Organizing Committee has successfully run the conference in 2006 and 2008; the 2010 session will be the third in the series. Many novel mechanisms are employed to ensure complete engagement from the speakers and attendees that result not only in successful, invigorating meetings, but in a strengthening of the field. Many cutting-edge and provocative results have been premiered at the first two AREADNE Conferences, a pattern that is expected to continue in the third.
The conference sessions focus on either experimental or analytical/theoretical approaches to understanding neural ensemble processing, or combine presentations from different approaches on the same brain area. Sessions are currently planned as (1) olfactory systems, (2) hippocampus and dentate gyrus, (3) stimulation techniques, (4) advanced functional labeling techniques, (5) network dynamics, (6) visual systems, and (7) motor systems. For each theme, presentations emphasize how sensory, cognitive, and motor states are encoded in the interaction of multiple neurons and in turn how these states can be reconstructed from neuronal ensembles.
About half of the attendees from previous meetings have been from the United States, and half from Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Across all attendees, one-third are students, one-third post-docs or junior faculty, and the remainder senior faculty. Speakers are selected from the world experts in the field, and include one-third women, reflective of the general attendance.
The Organizing Committee consists of systems neuroscientists with wide and varied backgrounds. Hybridization within the committee is reflected in the range of invited speakers and thus at the conference itself where cross-disciplinary discussions among attendees, rather than being exceptional, are the norm. Feedback forms from attendees are overwhelmingly positive, including specifically on the aspect of discussion and interaction.
The conference proceedings are provided to attendees in printed form and on CD-ROM, and shortly after the end of each meeting, are published on the conference web site. In the 12 months ending on 1 October 2009, slightly more than 4,500 copies have been downloaded, demonstrating a very broad impact.
Introduction The AREADNE 2010 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles Conference was held as planned 17-20 June 2010. There were 23 invited speakers and 60 presented abstracts. There were delegates from 15 different countries: 57 from North America, 60 from Europe, and 6 from the Middle East. The delegates included 24 post-docs and 41 students. The AREADNE reputation for high-quality presentations and discussions continues to grow, with 2010 being the second sold-out conference in a row. Goals and Achievements There were three primary goals for AREADNE 2012, all of which were met. The first, to provide a forum for discussing cutting-edge results from the field, was achieved as can be seen in both the high-profile list of speakers and the sustained attendance with the final session audience at 95 percent of the first session. The second, to enable the development of lasting professional relationships, was fulfilled by the daily schedule that allowed a large fraction of time for one-on-one interaction that supported the numerous, lengthy luncheon discussions, nearly countless coffee break discussions, and the well-attended poster sessions that lasted late into the night each time. The third, to create a world-class scientific venue that offers US researchers exposure to their European and Eastern Mediterranean peers, is supported by the demographics presented above, the many personal comments the organizers received, and the overwhelmingly positive responses on the feedback forms. Broader Impact While the opportunities presented by AREADNE Conferences for unfettered international exchange of scientific knowledge were clear to participants, the comments from a US student on an anonymous feedback form are perhaps the most telling of the broader impact: ``It was a great conference and a great opportunity for a grad student like me to get to know about modern research in Neuroscience.'' In addition to the printed and CD-ROM copies provided to attendees, the final program from 2010 is now available for free download as a PDF file via the AREADNE Conferences web site at http://areadne.org. Over 7,000 copies of the programs from all years combined have been downloaded in the 24 months ending 1 March 2011. Scientific Highlights Compared to the previous two meetings, AREADNE 2010 was even more impressive in the quality and impact of the presentations. Four of the many highlights were Michael Hausser's description of how synapse patterning across the dendritic field can be used to make neurons more or less selective to patterns of incoming activity and thus modulate each neuron's engagement in a local ensemble. Matteo Carandini's presentation of a lovely model for understanding the different computational regimes visual cortex exhibits under high versus low local contrast, and compelling evidence supporting his model. Shy Shoham's talk was such a rich and dense set of technical advances and scientific results that at least one delegate remembered it as two separate talks, and another senior delegate said it alone made attending the meeting worthwhile. Finally, Jeff Lichtman presented a beautiful tool for optically dissecting the complexity of the developing neuromuscular junction and demonstrating the inter-neuronal competition that drives development at a wide range of scales.
