in partnership with the Brain Prize
Synapses are the major sites of information processing in the brain. The complexity of the synapse has been described in the past few years in great molecular details and major achievements have been gained in the understanding of networks of proteins occurring at the pre-synaptic cytomatrix and the postsynaptic compartment of both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. Synaptic dysfunction is a central aspect of many brain disorders (“synaptopathies”) and synapses are and potentially will be the main target of drugs for brain diseases. Synapses integrate complex signals through temporal and spatial codes and undergo rapid structural and functional changes (synaptic plasticity) that underlie the formation of engrams in the brain. Maladaptation of such processes can lead to aberrant perception, cognitive dysfunction or neurodegeneration. The study of the molecular mechanisms of synaptic function and -plasticity are the key to understanding of how the brain works and what goes wrong in brain disease. The advanced course will expose students to state-of-art techniques for molecular imaging and functional methodologies, through direct hands-on experiments.
Directors & co-directors
- Monica Di Luca (University of Milano, Italy)
- Nathalie Sans (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
- Fabrizio Gardoni (University of Milan, Italy)
Julien Dupuis (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
José A. Esteban (Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Spain)
Anna Fejtova (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
Matthew Holt (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research, Belgium)
Alexandros Kanellopoulos (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Anna Karpova (Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Germany)
Mathieu Letellier (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Manuel Mameli (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Elena Marcello (University of Milano, Italy)
Brian McCabe (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Marina Mikhaylova (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany)
Valentin Nägerl (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Julie Perroy (Institute of Functional Genomics in Montpellier, France)
Ramón Reig (Instituto de neurociencias de Alicante, Spain)
Jean-Baptiste Sibarita (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Tara Spires-Jones (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Jennifer Stanic (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Raffaella Tonini (Italian Institute of Technology, Italy)
Chiara Verpelli (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Neuroscience Institute, Italy)
Keynote speakers
Claudia Bagni (VIB Center for the Biology of Disease – KU Leuven, Belgium)
Timothy Bliss (Francis Crick Institute, UK) 2016 Brain Prize winner
Daniel Choquet (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Graham Collingridge (University of Bristol, UK) 2016 Brain Prize winner
Eckart Gundelfinger (Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Germany)
Johannes Hell (University of California Davis, USA)
Jeremy Henley (University of Bristol, UK)
Michael Kreutz (Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Germany)
Richard Morris (University of Edinburgh, UK) 2016 Brain Prize winner
Christophe Mulle (Bordeaux Neurocampus, France)
Isabel Perez-Otano (University of Navarra Medical School, Spain)
Carlo Sala (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Neuroscience Institute, Italy)
Carmen Sandi (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)