October 1, 2015

Social behavior focus of Conte Center Symposium

The eighth annual Conte Center Symposium will be held from noon to 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9, in room 1220, Medical Research Building III.

The eighth annual Conte Center Symposium will be held from noon to 5:30 p.m. Oct. 9 in room 1220, Medical Research Building III.

This year’s symposium – entitled “Why Can’t We Be Friends? Molecules and Neural Networks Underlying Social Experience” – will feature six experts on the neurobiology of social behavior and cognition.

The speakers and their topics are:

• Jennifer Blackford, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, “The Shy Brain: Neural Correlates of Risk and Resilience to Anxiety;”

• Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Vanderbilt University, “InterActing with Play: Exploring and Treating Social Stress in Autism;”

• Allison Knoll, Ph.D., Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, “Viva La Difference: The Heritable Origins of Heterogeneity in Social Behavior;”

• Edward Kravitz, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School Department of Neurobiology, “Genetic Manipulations in the Fruit Fly Fight Club: How Amine Neurons Work Studied at a Single Cell Level,” and

• Xiang Yu, Ph.D., Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai, China, “The More the Better: Oxytocin Mediates Early Cortical Crossmodal Plasticity.”

For more information and to register for the symposium, visit the Conte Center website at www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/contecenter. Other questions? Contact Denise.Malone@vanderbilt.edu.

The NIMH/Vanderbilt Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research was established in 2008 with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. It focuses on early-life serotonin signaling, the role of the neurotransmitter serotonin on brain development, signaling, plasticity and mental illness.