About Neural Coding meetings:

The NEURAL CODING symposia in this series are multidisciplinary meetings of scientists specialized in neural coding. The 2007 one will be held for the first time in Latin America and be in honor of Prof. José Pedro Segundo, founder and leading scientist in the field, and usual participant since their inception.

The meetings traditionally are relatively small and highly interdisciplinary. Their major emphasis is on the search for common principles in neural coding though, obviously, it does not neglect functionally relevant between-system differences. Previuos workshops were held in Prague (CZ, 1995), Versailles (F, 1997), Osaka (JP, 1999), Plymouth (UK, 2001), Aulla (Italy, 2003) and Marburg (Germany, 2005). In this last meeting in Margurg and considering the growing importance of the field in Latin America's south cone, Montevideo Uruguay was elected as the next location.

   Goals:
           Neural Coding symposia bring together neuroscientists from different fields with the conviction that multidisciplinary approaches are essential for better understanding neural coding mechanisms as well as their disturbances in clinical cases. Hence, the attendees of the Neural Coding Workshop should be prepared to cross the borders of their own disciplines. In particular, we aim at comparing results from different functional levels, including subcellular, single-neuron, neuronal network and systemic levels. Discussed too should be between-level interdependencies and their implications for sensation, cognition, autonomous control and action.
     Expected and encouraged will be intense and, of course, also controversial discussion about the experimental, modelling and analytical approaches and about promises in terms of themselves and their combinations for better understanding neural coding mechanisms. Not ignored will be their possible roles in causing and treating neurological and related diseases. Major emphasis shall be laid on biologically inspired formal and computer-implemented models which could elucidate the functionally relevant dynamics of the neural coding mechanisms involved.

Conferences and posters will be assigned to different topics. For example, the last meeting consisted on the following:

Complex System Theory, Information Processing and Nonlinear Dynamics
Memory, Learning, Self Organisation and Robotics
Feature Extraction and Decision Making
Oscillations, Resonance and Synchronization
Spatio-Temporal Patterns, Neural Transduction and Neuromodulation
Fluctuations, Noise, Chaos and Information Extraction

The workshop will be kept within a reasonable size, with an upper limit of around 150 attendees (including students from the region). We will have about 40 oral presentations and reserve enough time for poster presentations. Main emphasis will be on discussions, which hopefully would continue during the different social events which are being organized. Moreover, this will be an excellent opportunity to establish contacts between the international experts and a small but very valuable and growing community of Uruguayan and Latin-American scientists, mainly from the adjacent countries.

     Activities for students:
     The symposium will be preceded by a three day introductory course addressed to students attending the symposium, and dictated by invited speakers.
     Fellowships for students will be available, as allowed by the financial support requested from several organizations, local or international.. This support will be conferred by an international selection committee following academic criteria. Call for applications will be published in this site as well as in Bulletins of the area and through Grupo Montevideo (an organization of universities from the Mercosur: Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay).

      Presentations:
Oral presentations will last 25 min, plus 5 min for questions. Poster size should be 80 cm wide by 130 cm high.

      Local support:
The following institutions have stated their intention to support the symposium:

Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable,
Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC), Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Programa para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Básicas (PEDECIBA), Uruguay.
Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo, Uruguay.

Inscription fee

The inscription fee for regular participants is 300 € (390 U$).
The inscription fee for (undergraduate and graduate) student and accompanying person is 150 € (195 U$).

Grants

A reduced amount of grants are available:

For undergraduate and graduate students from the region (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay). Students applying to these grants should fill the registration page presenting a CV, abstract, and a letter indicating why a grant should be awarded to them and a scientific reference (including the e-mail address). Founds for these grants were provided by IBRO and LABRO.

Travel funds will likely be available to US undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs to attend a pre-meeting Joint US/Uruguay Workshop on Neural Dynamics, the meeting on Neural Coding, and to visit laboratories in the southern cone area of South America. Details to follow.