SPONT 2018 : Meeting on Spontaneous Activity in Brain Development

External Event - 8th to 10th Oct 2018

The discovery that the developing brain generates spontaneous activity already before the senses become active excited many neuroscientists. Since its discovery, many studies have shown that spontaneous activity is required for normal wiring of the brain. However, only recent technological advances have allowed investigating how spontaneous activity actually drives cellular and molecular processes, such as synaptic plasticity, to prepare the brain for computing sensory inputs. The goal of this meeting is to bring together scientists working in this field from across the world to present and discuss the latest, ideally unpublished, data on the role of spontaneous activity in the developing brain.

Organizers: Christian Lohmann (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Guillermina Lopez-Bendito (Institute of Neuroscience, Alicante, Spain).

Arrival & departure: The meeting will be in Leiden (see map below) and will start on Monday 8th October at 1:00pm and finish with a light lunch on Wednesday 10th October.

Speakers

• James Ackman UC Santa Cruz

• Dwight Bergles Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

• Matthew Colonnese George Washington University

• Rosa Cossart Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée, Marseille

• Michael Crair Yale School of Medicine

• Stephen Eglen University of Cambridge

• David Feldheim UC Santa Cruz

• Marla Feller UC Berkeley

• Julijana Gjorgjieva Max Planck for Brain Research, Frankfurt

• Takeshi Imai Kyushu University

• Takuji Iwasato National Institute of Genetics, Japan

• Patrick Kanold University of Maryland

• Matthias Kaschube Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies

• Rustem Khazipov INSERM- KFU

• Christian Lohmann Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

• Guillermina Lopez-Bendito Instituto de Neurociencias Alicante

• Heiko Luhmann Institute of Physioogy Mainz

• Kenichi Ohki Kyushu University

Location

Museum Volkenkunde Leiden, Steenstraat 1. Leiden, Netherlands 
Leiden is about 40 km to the south of Amsterdam. The venue is just a few minutes walk from Leiden train station.

If you are looking for local accommodation, one possibility is the IBIS Leiden Centre Stationsplein 240-242. This is just a few minutes walk away from the meeting.

Register

Registration for the meeting is now open. To register, visit this form and submit your details. You will get an automatic email confirming your details. Within a few days you should then hear from us whether your registration has been accepted, and if so, asking for payment.

If you are accepted to the meeting, there is early registration deadline of 31st July. The fees for registration are: Corporate 400€, PI 250€, postdocs 200€, students 150€. For late registration (from 1st August until 30th September) fees rise to: Corporate 500€, PI 350€, postdocs 300€, students 250€. Payment can be made by bank transfer or Paypal.

The registration fee includes registeration to the meeting, lunches, coffee breaks and a gala dinner on the second evening.

Contact

To contact us about the meeting, please email spont2018@gmail.com

For more information on this event please visit http://spont2018.org/