CISSN 2018
3rd Catania International Summer School of Neuroscience
Catania, Sicily, Italy, 16-20 July 2018
The Catania International Summer School of Neuroscience has always attracted attendees from Europe interested in the most appealing topics in Neuroscience and Neuropsychopharmacology. The CISSN 2018 is entitled “Synaptic Function and Dysfunction: new Targets for Brain Diseases Pharmacology”. During the CISSN, 10 lectures of 120 min (including 30-min discussion) will be delivered by experts from among the best in the field of brain diseases and neuropharmacology.
The main aim of the CISSN 2018 is to bring together junior European neuroscientists and principal investigators working on synaptic functions and synaptopathies and to provide a forum for new directions and ideas in synapse research. This serves to create a research community with an active role in promoting synaptic research and its funding. The meeting will combine research lectures by leading neuroscientists from Europe and aims to encourage lively discussions and the free exchange of information and ideas.
CISSN 2018 topic: "Synaptic Function and Dysfunction: new Targets for Brain Diseases Pharmacology"
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 made 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 how the brain works and what goes wrong in brain disease.