GTReal Workshop: Real-Time Methods in Electrophysiology

简介（申请人提供）：第二届年度GTReal研讨会将于2006年5月或6月在波士顿大学校园举行。大约120名具有不同经验水平的科学家（学生、博士后、教职员工）将参加这次会议。会议将包括3位特邀演讲者，12-15场专题演讲，以及2-4场“分组”会议，与会者将讨论共同感兴趣的话题。也会有一个动手教程。根据提交的数量，也可能有海报。继2005年5月在佐治亚理工学院举行的第一届会议取得成功后，会议将集中讨论以下主题：(1)交流科学成果。由于涉及技术障碍，只有少数研究人员使用实时“动态钳”系统来模拟可兴奋细胞中的膜电导。这些研究人员之所以遇到这样的麻烦，是因为动态钳夹技术提供了最好的方法来测试生命系统中特定的、基于计算的假设。邀请和贡献的演讲将集中在动态钳和其他实时应用在神经生理学和其他学科的令人兴奋的例子，以及用于获得这些结果的技术手段。(2)建立开发者和终端用户的社区。在对动态钳的开创性工作进行了十多年后，还没有出现交钥匙系统，但几个小组已经设计出了看起来很有希望的系统。分组会议的一个主要目标是继续建立一个基于开源软件开发原则的实时技术开发人员和最终用户社区。GTReal的与会者将构成这个社区的核心。教程和非正式的交互将增加熟练用户和开发人员的骨干。(3)将实时方法扩展到新型实验中。实时技术允许在生物学实验中进行前所未有程度的定量假设检验。该技术的一些扩展将大大增加其影响。例如，在细胞神经生理学中，应该有可能将实时技术和光学技术结合起来进行记录和刺激。实时技术也有可能彻底改变系统生理学和感觉系统的行为研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The 2nd annual GTReal workshop will be held in May or June 2006 at the campus of Boston University. The meeting will be attended by around 120 scientists at a range of levels of experience (students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members). The meeting will include 3 invited speakers, 12-15 contributed talks, and 2-4 "breakout" sessions, in which attendees will discuss topics of mutual interest. There will also be a hands-on tutorials. Depending on the number of submissions, there may be posters as well. Following on the success of the first event, held in May 2005 at the Georgia Tech, GTReal will focus on the following topics: (1) Exchanging scientific results. Because of the technical hurdles involved, only a handful of investigators are using real-time "dynamic clamp" systems to mimic membrane conductances in excitable cells. These investigators have gone to this level of trouble because dynamic clamp techniques provide the best method to test specific, computationally based hypotheses in living systems. Invited and contributed talks will focus on exciting examples of dynamic clamp and other real-time applications in neurophysiology and other disciplines, as well as technical means used to obtain such results. (2) Building a community of developers and end-users. Over a decade after the seminal work on dynamic clamp, no turn-key system exists, but several groups have devised systems that seem promising. A major goal of the breakout sessions will be to continue to build a community of developers and end-users of real-time technology, based on the principles of open-source software development. The attendees of GTReal will constitute much of the core of this community. Tutorials and informal interactions will add to the cadre of skilled users and developers. (3) Extending the real-time approach to new types of experiments. Real-time techniques allow an unprecedented degree of quantitative hypothesis testing in biological experiments. A number of extensions of the technique would increase its impact dramatically. For example, within cellular neurophysiology, it should be possible to combine real-time technology and optical techniques for recording and stimulation. Real-time techniques also have the potential to revolutionize systems physiology and behavioral studies of sensory systems.