Conference: 2018 Thalamocortical Interactions GRC: Development, Function and Dysfunction of Thalamocortical Networks, Lucca, Italy, February 2018

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This award will provide support to US-based students and post-doctoral fellows and junior scientists to attend the 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Development, Function and Dysfunction of Thalamocortical Networks. This five-day meeting and the associated Research Seminar brings together researchers to present results and engage in discussions on the cell and circuit properties of thalamocortical interactions, and build on these to explore their roles in cognition and behavior and how their dysfunction manifests in disease. This conference represents a rare opportunity for neuroscientists interested in thalamocortical interactions to exchange new results, hypotheses, and ideas at many levels, from cellular through systems to cognitive and clinical. With respect to broader impacts, this meeting will benefit the larger community in multiple ways. First, it will help train and inspire the next generation of scientists by exposing students and postdoctoral fellows to exciting science and scientists. Second, special emphasis will be given to junior faculty. Finally, a concerted effort will be made to recruit scientists from under-represented groups and targeted mentoring sessions will help the junior scientists in their career paths.The intellectual merit of this meeting derives from its small size, which promotes interactions between participants, and the assembly of many top scientists whose research spans thalamocortical interactions across multiple sensory modalities, emphasizing the commonalities. This combination leads to fruitful comparative analyses, raises new questions about underlying mechanisms and often leads to new collaborations. By maximizing both formal discussion and informal interactions, the Gordon Conference and Research Seminar will highlight exciting new developments that have implications both for a basic understanding of the emergent properties of neural circuits as well as pathologies that involve thalamocortical disruptions. This is especially timely because this field has been expanding significantly with the recent appreciation that the thalamus plays an ongoing and critical role in cortical functioning.