Among
the most important duties of an academic center are the
dissemination of emerging information and the creation
of a forum to discuss new ideas. With the generous support
of the M.R. Bauer Foundation, now in its sixth year, the
Volen Center for Complex Systems again mounted, in 1999,
an impressive series of colloquia on emerging topics in
neuroscience as well as a scientific retreat highlighting
the work of outstanding graduate students in neuroscience.
An exciting new enterprise in 1999 was the M.R. Bauer
Distinguished Guest Lecturer Series. I am very pleased
to present the following review of the 1998-1999 proceedings,
which reflected the results of the year's undertakings
and helped to advance the Volen Center's core mission.
In 1998-99 the M.R. Bauer Foundation Colloquium Series
featured talks that elucidated a wide range of fascinating
topics, including the uniqueness of episodic memory, the
role of zinc in neuronal death, and the hippocampus minor
as an example of the historic role of neuroanatomy in
the debate on evolution. As in past years, our speakers
comprised a selection of the most distinguished neuroscientists
active today, including Dennis Choi
of Washington University School of Medicine, Charles
G. Gross of Princeton University, Richard
W. Tsien of Stanford University of Medicine, Michael
Gazzaniga of Dartmouth College, and Endel
Tulving of the University of Toronto. Together, the
speakers offered valuable insights into developments in
their chosen areas of research and served to broaden and
deepen the ongoing investigation of neuroscience ranging
from molecules to cognition at Brandeis University.
A highlight of the year has been the new M.R. Bauer
Distinguished Guest Lecturer Series. This new program
brought to campus two of the most outstanding neuroscientists
in the world - Dr. Zach Hall,
Vice Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco,
and Dr. Bert Sakmann,
chair of the Department of Cell Physiology at the Max
Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany.
Dr. Hall, who has made fundamental contributions to understanding
the neuromuscular junction, recently served as director
of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke, one of the National Institutes of Health. His
perspective on the creation of national science policy
was highly informative. Dr. Sakmann, who shared the Nobel
Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1991 for his discoveries
concerning single ion channels, spoke about his active
research program. He described his efforts to address
the basic mechanisms underlying higher brain functions.
Both M.R. Bauer Distinguished Guest Lecturers presented
public talks, gave classroom lecturers, visited many of
the Volen Center's laboratories, made presentations at
the Neuroscience Journal Club, and interacted with members
of the Brandeis science community, including faculty,
postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduate
students. The two visitors brought valuable insights to
our faculty and students.
Sponsored by the M.R. Bauer Foundation, the 1999
Volen Retreat was held at the Marine Biological Laboratory
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on February 23 and 24. In
distinction to previous years, when faculty and postdoctoral
fellows were the focus of the Retreat, this year's event
featured former and current graduate students from the
Volen Center. The graduate students presented their work,
ranging from studies of artificial intelligence, neural
development, and biological clocks to ion channel properties,
learning and memory. I was especially pleased by the scope
and quality of their research, which underscore the Volen
Center's excellence in training and education. The Retreat's
keynote speakers were Emilio Salinas
of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who spoke
on "Stimulus encoding during somatosensory discrimination:
spike timing, firing rate and signal-to-noise modulations,"
and Hongkui Zeng of MIT's
Center for Learning and Memory and Center for Cancer Research,
who spoke about "Hippocampus-dependent learning in conditional
transgenic mice." Approximately 125 scientists and students
attended the annual two-day event. The retreat offers
an excellent opportunity each year for scientists at the
Volen Center to learn more about each other's work and
to benefit from the suggestions and perspectives of colleagues.
It is also a marvelous opportunity for younger scientists,
at the graduate and postdoctoral level, to gain professional
exposure, establish new ties, and learn from the insights
and critiques of older scientists. These young neuroscientists
represent future generations of researchers and teachers
who will carry the study of the brain far beyond what
we envision now.
The
publication of these proceedings is a major element in
the Volen Center's effort to encourage scientific collaboration
and discussion. The M.R. Bauer Foundation Colloquium Series
and Scientific Retreat have proven to be highly successful
in bringing together the Neuroscience community at Brandeis
and more broadly in North America, in fostering the exchange
of ideas and methods across disciplinary boundaries, and
in advancing the study of learning, memory, and cognition.
I am pleased to thank the M.R. Bauer Foundation for underwriting
these important activities.
Laurence
F. Abbott
Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Neuroscience
Director, Volen
National Center for Complex Systems
