Meeting Details

Organizers: Chris Dulla, Ph.D. (Tufts University) and Mark Beenhakker, Ph.D. (University of Virginia)

Goals: This SFN pre-meeting will bring together established and early-career researchers, clinicians, and trainees in an intensive, interactive environment to present and discuss state-of-the-art, unpublished findings related to the basic mechanisms of epilepsy and current translational advances. While the meeting will be open for attendance, we have already gathered a significant list of national and international scientists who have expressed enthusiasm and provided verbal commitments to attend. From this feedback the meeting will be thematically organized around the diverse mechanisms that enable neural circuits to generate seizures.

Background: The last decade of epilepsy research highlights how challenging the goal of curing epilepsy remains. Indeed, the simplistic models of neuronal excitation versus inhibition, prevalent in epilepsy research decades ago, are no longer adequate to understand how seizures arise. This is especially true with the thalamocortical system and its differential engagement in primary generalized vs. focal seizures. Defining specific roles for components of this large scale epileptic circuit is challenging, where for example, inhibition can play distinct seizure-promoting vs seizure-suppressing roles. As long as our mechanistic understanding of seizure generation remains incomplete, the development of new and better treatments for epilepsy will be limited. Therefore, the meeting aims to construct a new intellectual framework that integrates recent molecular, cellular, and circuit-level discoveries in epilepsy research that reveal the striking differences in thalamic vs cortical features that contribute to various epilepsies. The sessions of our pre-meeting will focus on how the complexities of synaptic communication, cellular heterogeneity, and intricate neuronal connectivity within the epileptic brain contribute to seizure generation. We will also explore how recent advances in basic epilepsy research can accelerate the development of new treatments. Ultimately, our goals are to disseminate the latest scientific advances, to foster productive new collaborations, to stimulate an interest in epilepsy research among young investigators and to increase the diversity of the epilepsy research workforce, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the delivery of new therapies to people with epilepsy.

In addition to our discussion leaders and speakers, the audience will ultimately be selected from the pool of applicants by the conference chairs, based on criteria such as scientific excellence, research interests, and the likelihood of contributing to and benefiting from the meeting. In organizing this conference, we have adhered to NIH guidelines on the inclusion of women, individuals from underrepresented groups, and persons with disabilities. During the selection process, we will place special emphasis on selecting underrepresented and women scientists, early career researchers, and trainees.

A primary motivation for establishing our epilepsy-focused SFN pre-meeting is to cultivate a strong interest in basic science epilepsy research among trainees. To achieve this goal, in addition to organizing a meeting schedule that includes presentations by both early career and established scientists, we will also hold a poster session primarily focused on trainee research. While many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers present posters at the main SFN meeting, these presentations are often scattered throughout the event and often conflict with ongoing SFN symposia. As a result, it can be difficult for SFN attendees to engage with poster presenters, most of whom are trainees. To address this issue, our pre-SFN meeting will provide a dedicated venue that centralizes epilepsy-themed posters, making it easier for conferees to connect with poster presenters.