2001 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Conference on Learning & Memory, Cold Srping Harbor, NY, April 23-20, 2001

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spg Hbr NY

Investigators

Abstract

GRODZICKER This intense four-day international conference will address current studies into the biological basis of how both animals and humans learn and remember. Rapid advances are being made in this field of neurobiology, revealing underlying mechanisms of learning and memory shared across much of the animal kingdom. Research into learning and memory is being carried out in many laboratories around the world, at many levels (molecules, cells, networks of cells, brain regions, as well as at the level of the whole brain), and in a variety of human and animal systems. Ongoing research is providing new insights into how the brain acquires and processes novel information, and how that newly acquired information is stored and retrieved in the form of memory. Repeatedly, scientists are finding common neurobiological themes emerging across a wide range of organisms; progress gained in a variety of systems, and using a plethora of differing techniques, is rapidly becoming integrated into a comprehensive view of how information acquisition and storage are handled in the brain. This conference seeks to bring together both established and young scientists working in this broad field, and to provide a forum for integrating traditionally separate areas of research. For example, scientists who study this problem in invertebrates such as flies and worms, using classical neurobiological and genetic techniques, will meet together with scientists working with human subjects, using non-invasive imaging techniques such as functional MRI. These interactions will benefit scientists working at every level in this field.