Resilience in Children

New York Academy Of Sciences, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): [unreadable] [unreadable] The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) is planning a major scientific conference entitled, "Resilience in Children," to be held from February 27-March 1, 2006 in Washington D.C. The conference is being organized by Barry M. Lester, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior and Pediatrics, and Director, Infant Development Center, Brown Medical School. It is an ideal time for a conference on this subject, as advances in neuroscience provide the opportunity to bring neurobiology to the study of resilience and to ask if there are neurobiological processes and mechanisms that can contribute to our understanding of resilience. The goals of this conference are to examine both the behavioral - psychosocial and the neurobiological aspects of resilience, and to help move the field toward a model that integrates these two perspectives. This integration will provide an unprecedented understanding of processes of development in atypically and typically developing children, and will have profound implications for preventive intervention programs. The conference will be organized according to three aspects of the neurobiology of resilience: brain plasticity, behavioral genetics and the neuroendocrine system. This symposium is expected to bring together leaders in neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics to identify conceptual and methodological problems, stimulate interdisciplinary and translational work in this field including preclinical and clinical studies, and prevention and social policy implications. An important outcome of this conference will be a summary statement based on the material presented at the conference, which will provide a state of the art assessment of behavioral - psychosocial and neurobiological aspects of resilience, the integration of these two perspectives into a single model, an overview of conceptual and methodological issues and recommendations for a new research agenda in the field. [unreadable] [unreadable]