CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Oct. 7, 2003—The McGovern Institute's Second Annual Symposium on October 20th and 21st to Feature World's Leading Scientists in Neuroscience, Molecular Neurobiology and Cognitive Science.

Dr. Phillip A. Sharp, Director of the McGovern Institute at MIT, announced today that the Institute's second annual Symposium,"Mechanisms Underlying Perception, Action and Mind" will be held on October 20th and 21st in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The conference will feature some of the world's leading scientists in the fields of neuroscience, molecular neurobiology, and cognitive science. The event is organized around the cutting edges of neuroscience and will address many of the most pressing issues in the field today.

"With each passing day we are learning more about how the brain works and identifying ways that this new knowledge may be leveraged in the future to improve human health, discover the basis for learning and recognition, and enhance education and communication," said Dr. Sharp. "At this year's Symposium we are proud to have the participation, in addition to our Investigators, of many of the world's leading scientists in our field, and we are confident that the information we share will be dynamic and engrossing."

The Symposium, to be held at the Wong Auditorium building on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts will offer four core sessions:

—Emotions/Fear: Chaired by Ann Graybiel of the McGovern Institute and featuring speakers Michael Davis (Emory University), Joseph LeDoux (New York University), Bruce McEwen (Rockefeller University) and Rene Hen (Columbia University). This session brings together renowned experts who study how the brain represents emotion and how emotions affect the brain. Much of our behavior depends on our emotions and how we react to the emotions of other people. Fear, stress, anxiety, happiness and a range of emotional colors now are thought to result from the activity of defined brain circuits.

—Motor Cortical Systems: Chaired by Emilio Bizzi of the McGovern Institute and featuring speakers Giacomo Rizzolatti (University of Parma, Italy), Eve Marder (Brandeis University), Atsushi Iriki (Tokyo Medical and Dental University) and Apostolos Georgopoulos (University of Minnesota). This session will focus on a number of issues related to the way in which the central nervous system plans and executes voluntary movements. The issues that are going to be presented are: how actions are stored and retrieved from the motor cortical areas; how motor sequences are generated; and, the neural underpinning of rhythmic movements and tools' use.

—Perception in the Cortex: Chaired by James DiCarlo and Christopher Moore of the McGovern Institute and featuring speakers Kenneth Johnson (Johns Hopkins University), Michael Shadlen (University of Washington), Jennifer Groh (Dartmouth College), Christof Koch (Caltech). This session will describe how neural activity recorded in the visual, tactile and auditory systems is linked to perception and the decision to act on a percept - as well as the fundamental progress we are making in understanding the relationship of these neural representations to behavior and perception. One of the central tenets of neuroscience is that patterns of neural activity underlie perception. That is, each perceptual experience is created by a specific pattern of neural activity that "stands for","represents", and "codes" that experience.

—Understanding Other Minds: Chaired by Nancy Kanwisher of the McGovern Institute and featuring speakers Gyorgy Gergely (Hungarian Academy of Science, Hungary), Paul Bloom (Yale University), Rebecca Saxe (Harvard University) and Marc Hauser (Harvard University). This session brings together world experts in this burgeoning new field to discuss the development, nature, and brain basis of the human ability to understand other minds. Our ability to infer the internal thoughts and intentions of other people from their outward behavior is a fundamental cognitive skill and one that may be unique to humans. New light is being shed on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this important skill from the synergistic research of developmental psychologists, functional brain imagers, and scientists working on comparative animal cognition.

Admission to the event is free and registration is not required. For more information on the event and a complete program of events: Events and Seminars.

Press Contact: Media interested in attending and receiving a pre-event digital media kit, should contact either Lyn Chamberlin (lyn@skyepr.com) or Derek Beckwith (derek@skyepr.com) at skyemedia, inc. or call 978-443-0400.

About the McGovern Institute at MIT

The McGovern Institute at MIT is a research and teaching institute committed to advancing human understanding and communications. The goal of the McGovern Institute is to investigate and ultimately understand the biological basis of all higher brain function in humans. The McGovern Institute conducts integrated research in neuroscience, genetic and cellular neurobiology, cognitive science, computation, and related areas.

By determining how the brain works, from the level of gene expression in individual neurons to the interrelationships between complex neural networks, the McGovern Institute's efforts work to improve human health, discover the basis of learning and recognition, and enhance education and communication. The McGovern Institute contributes to the most basic knowledge of the fundamental mysteries of human awareness, decisions, and actions.

For additional information, please go to http://web.mit.edu/mcgovern.

Contacts
skyemedia, inc.
Lyn Chamberlin, 978-443-0400
lyn@skyepr.com
or
skyemedia, inc.
Derek Beckwith, 978-443-0400
derek@skyepr.com

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