Brain theory researchers to convene at University of California, San Diego

Already a global center for neuroscience research, the University of California, San Diego will host top scholars working on theoretical and quantitative approaches to issues in neurobiology during the 13th annual summer meeting of The Sloan-Swartz Centers for Theoretical Neurobiology on the UCSD campus July 28-31.

Researchers from the 11 Sloan-Swartz institutions, plus outside speakers, will present on decision making and movement; neural circuits; attention; plasticity, learning and memory. Scott Makeig, director of the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at UCSD, and Terry Sejnowski, a leading neuroscientist at Salk Institute and director of the UCSD Institute for Neural Computation, are the meeting co-organizers. A complete meeting program is available at: http://www.sccn.ucsd.edu/sloan-swartz-2007/program.html.

In placing the meeting in perspective, Makeig said, “Brain science breakthroughs have become front-page news in recent years, and the increasing momentum of research in quantitative brain science research is a driving force behind these insights. This annual meeting is intended to provoke new ideas among a diverse group of researchers focused on an important problem – how brains work.”

Arthur Ellis, vice chancellor for research at UCSD, said “The UCSD community is proud to be this year's host for the Sloan-Swartz Centers Annual Meeting. Brain science research is an integral part of our campus research enterprise. These collaborative, interdisciplinary annual meetings provide an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest exciting developments in this rapidly moving field.”

The Swartz Foundation neuroscience initiatives, now a force behind the accelerating emergence of computational neuroscience, support research at five Sloan/Swartz Centers for Theoretical Neurobiology (Salk Institute, Caltech, UC San Francisco, NYU/Courant and Brandeis) and at six Swartz centers and initiatives for Computational Neuroscience (UC San Diego, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale universities).

Jerry Swartz, chairman of the foundation, underscored the role of theory: “A decade or more ago, fundamental theory – a key aspect of investigation in many sciences – was scarce in brain research. Over the years, the initiatives of both the Sloan and Swartz foundations have placed post-doctoral researchers from physics, mathematics and computer science into selected neuroscience laboratories to encourage integration of theory and experimentation.” For more information, visit http://www.theswartzfoundation.org