Genes are transcribed within an organized nucleoplasm where their function and three-dimensional environment interact. At the frontier between molecular and cell biology, biophysics and mathematics, this meeting will cover recent advances enabling measurement of transcriptional activity within living cells and providing new insights into transcription mechanisms.

The goal of this meeting is to bring together people working on structural plasticity in vivo, with a focus on the recent longitudinal imaging approaches and related studies. We hope to identify open problems and develop a consensus on standards for measurement and analysis, as well as to discuss imaging approaches beyond structure that might allow measurement of functional synaptic plasticity in vivo. The format will be a mixture of talks, poster sessions and breakout discussions.

This meeting will bring together groups working on circuitry, behavior and in vivo physiology of the whisker system. In addition to standard presentations, this meeting will offer overview lectures and small workshops addressing various topics, such as the role of vibrissa sensorimotor control in the larger framework of neuroscience, advances in anatomical methods, including possible coordination of efforts in quantitative anatomy, and prospects for delineating the molecular basis and cellular pathways of mechanosensory input from the vibrissa.

This meeting is a follow-up to the first one, held in spring 2008, and will focus on new strategies and methods for imaging biological samples. Advances in resolution, sensitivity, labeling and contrast mechanisms will be reviewed. Optical methods will be deeply covered, but non-optical methods will also be discussed, as well as new contrast mechanisms and “activity imaging."

This conference will focus not on pure image analysis, but will instead stress the importance of extracting useful and biologically relevant descriptions and knowledge from image contents in a systematic, comprehensive and high-throughput way. It will discuss the state-of-the-art in the related fields, and promote the development of critical tools that will accelerate the discovery of useful knowledge from image contents. Among others, participants will discuss topics relevant to how biologists are currently annotating 3D images on different scales, and how these methods can be improved, as well as how to manage complex annotations with regard to ontology and database limitations.

This meeting will explore progress in our understanding of the sense of smell from diverse viewpoints. Participants will discuss how the olfactory map develops, how it functions as a microcircuit, and how the olfactory system contributes to innate behaviors in the laboratory and in the wild.

RNA molecules are increasingly recognized as central players in human gene regulation. This meeting focused on the intersection of basic and applied research into the mechanisms by which regulatory RNAs function. Talks and discussion covered topics including regulatory RNA structures and ribozymes, antibiotics that target the ribosome, and RNAi.

Studies of the nervous system at the biophysical and network level have provided valuable, albeit occasionally disparate, insights into the ways in which neural circuits transform and represent information. This small meeting sought to identify and develop strategies that will enable results obtained from diverse approaches and perspectives to best complement each other.

The meeting emphasized two broad themes, including 1) Identifying general principles of neural computation by studying circuits at different levels, and 2) Identifying causal relationships between the biophysical, circuit, and functional characteristics of neurons in vivo.

New genetic, molecular, optical and computational tools are transforming light microscopy in ways that offer the promise of neural circuit reconstruction at previously inconceivable levels of detail and completeness. This workshop explored current advances in light-based approaches to high-resolution neural circuit imaging and analysis, including:

• genetic methods (targeted gene expression, recombinase-based stochastic labeling, fluorescent proteins)
• cytochemistry (indicators and proteomic reagents)
• light-based acquisition strategies (nanoscopy, array tomography, multi-photon imaging)
• informatics (registration, tracing, visualization, modeling, integration of light and electron microscopic data).

We also had a session devoted to some of the high-throughput programs currently underway or in the planning stages.

This conference was a follow-up to the one held in 2008. At the first meeting, we highlighted the recent development of new genetic reagents for the exogenous control of neural circuit activity, including naturally evolved light-gated ion channels and pumps, mutagenized temperature-sensitive synaptic transmission components, rationally designed photo-switches, and "orthogonal" drug/receptor pairs, among others. In this meeting, we brought together leaders in the field to review progress in the design and use of current tools, and, even more importantly, to focus on the development of novel tools and their potential applications.

This conference was a follow-up to the first one, held in 2008. We considered current challenges and recent advances in computer vision and image analysis techniques that may advance neuroscience studies, and vice versa. Topics included: deriving meaningful 3D reconstructions of cellular architecture and wiring diagrams of a brain, medical and biological image analysis methods for studying the brain, developing automatic tracking and behavior analysis algorithms for model animals, and how neuroscience can guide the design of more powerful computer vision and image analysis algorithms, systems, and image mining mechanisms.