Notice

Autism Speaks offers funding opportunities for new investigators in the field of autism research, or established investigators wishing to expand or develop current research projects. The next deadline for letters of intent is November 2, 2007. Applicants should visit this website for more information and to submit an electronic LOI and application.

Cortical Modularity in Autism

The goal of this symposium is to provide a cohesive forum on the latest anatomical approaches to understanding the basic components of cortical modularity and their involvement in different pathological states, e.g., autism. The symposium seeks to encourage communication and in-depth discussion of a broad range of subjects under the unifying theme of cortical modularity.

The topics to be covered at the conference span a wide spectrum of resolution, that is, from minicolumns and their parcellation into different components (e.g., apical dendritic bundles) all the way to macrocolumns and networks of the same. The program includes internationally recognized leaders and talented new investigators.

By bringing together these researchers the symposium will:

1. help coalesce apparently disparate subjects under the umbrella of cortical modularity and
2. develop a focused group with a coherent view on how to identify cortical modules and their basic components.

Presentations

Friday, 2007 October 12

• Keynote address: Creativity from cortex (William H. Calvin, University of Washington, Seattle)

Saturday, 2007 October 13

• Autism Tissue Program: an Autism Speaks initiative (Jane Pickett, Autism Speaks, Princeton, New Jersey)
• A neurobiological reason why very early diagnosis of autism may be crucial to improving prognosis (Peter E. Tanguay)
• A lifetime of neurogenesis in the primate cortex (David R. Kornack, University of Rochester, New York)
• Principles of brain wiring: from module to mind (Michel Hofman, Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, Amsterdam)
• Regulation of cortical neuron number by FGF: implications for autism spectrum disorders (Flora Vaccarino, Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, Connecticut)
• Quantitative architechtural analysis: a new approach to cortical mapping (Axel Schleicher, C. and O. Vogt Brain Research Institute, Düsseldorf, Germany)
• A functional role for the minicolumn in cortical population coding (Gerard Rinkus, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts)
• Cortical hierarchy and ageing of cortical minicolumns (Steven Chance, University of Oxford and SANE-POWIC, Oxford)
• Pleiotropic effects of neurotransmission during development: modulators of modularity (Gregg Stanwood, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee)

Sunday, 2007 October 14

• The role of cortical modularity in tactile information processing (Mark Tommerdahl, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
• The intense world syndrome as an alternative theory of autism (Kamila Markram, Brain Mind Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Role of phosphodiesterases in etiology and treatment of autism (S. Hossein Fatemi, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis)
• Cortical modularity and autism (Manuel F. Casanova, University of Louisville, Kentucky)

Sponsors

Further reading

Henry Markram, Tania Rinaldi, and Kamila Markram. The intense world syndrome—an alternative hypothesis for autism. Frontiers in Neuroscience 2007 November; 1(1): 77–96.