[BIC-announce] (forw) January 27th: R.E. Bell Lecture

[Jean-Francois Malouin]

For those interested...
jf

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			      R.E. Bell Lecture
			    Department of Physics
			      McGill University

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		       Friday, January 27th 2012, 15:30
	Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112)
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     Wiring the brain: the molecules and mechanisms of neuronal guidance

			     Marc Tessier-Lavigne

			    Rockefeller University

The functioning of the brain is dependent on the billions of connections
among nerve cells that are formed during embryonic development to
establish the neuronal circuits that underlie all brain functions -
perception, the control of movement, memory, consciousness. To generate
these connections, neuronal growth cones must navigate over long distances
through the embryonic environment along specific pathways to find their
correct targets, guided by attractive and repulsive guidance cues. These
guidance mechanisms act simultaneously and in coordinate fashion to
direct pathfinding, and are mediated by mechanistically and evolutionarily
conserved ligand-receptor systems. This presentation will describe some
recent advances in elucidating neuronal growth and guidance mechanisms,
including evidence that defects in these mechanisms underlie some human
neurological disorders, and discuss mounting evidence that molecules that
regulate neuronal guidance during development also contribute to wiring
other tissues and organs and to regulating nerve regeneration following
injury in the adult nervous system.

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