Tel Aviv University is inaugurating the Segol School of Neuroscience next week; A conference on the topic of memory will be held at Haifa University

Nobel laureates and leading scientists will participate in an international conference on brain research that will be held on the occasion of the inauguration of the "Purple School of Neuroscience" at Tel Aviv University * Prior to that, a conference will be held in Haifa that will deal with the issue of where is memory preserved?

In an interesting coincidence, two conferences in the field of brain research will be held next week, for the benefit of those interested in the subject.

On Tuesday-Thursday, February 7-9, 2012, there will be a Bar Shira Auditorium at Tel Aviv University
An event to mark the inauguration of the Segol School of Neuroscience (named after Sami Segol) will be held at Tel Aviv University between February 7-9, an international brain research conference.
The conference will bring together for the first time four Nobel Prize laureates, in the fields of physiology and medicine: Linda Buck (USA) and Erwin Nahar (Germany) and in the field of chemistry: Martin Chalfi (USA) and Ada Yonat (Israel). Leading researchers in the fields of neuroscience from Israel and the world will also participate.

The gathering will focus, among other things, on innovations and scientific breakthroughs in understanding the mechanisms of degenerative and psychiatric diseases, such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia, and on the progress made in the development of drugs for these diseases; in the brain's abilities to absorb and process information; In the neural basis for emotions and in processing information received through the senses. Among the topics that will be discussed: understanding the sense of smell, the genetic basis of violence; how the brain knows how to recognize faces; how bats know how to navigate their way; The flexible brain - how learning is possible in the brain even at older ages.

Segol School of Neuroscience will train the future generation of neuroscientists

The Segol School of Neuroscience, which will be established at Tel Aviv University, is the first of its kind in Israel. Prof. Yosef Klefter, president of Tel Aviv University, noted that the university has mobilized its full academic strength for a tremendous and innovative task: training the future generation of outstanding scientists, researchers with broad horizons and knowledge, who will lead neuroscience in the years to come.

According to Prof. Uri Ashari, head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience, the new school will admit the best of students, and they will study there from the first degree level to the outstanding ones, through programs for an accredited degree and up to a doctorate in brain research. At the school, the students will meet the best lecturers and researchers in the field from seven different faculties across the campus: life sciences and social sciences, medicine and engineering, exact sciences, humanities and humanities. The combination of the different faculties will allow the school to develop new interdisciplinary programs in brain research in the coming years. The students at the school will be exposed to current multi-layered knowledge in an enriching environment of interdisciplinary collaboration, and will face the challenges of scientific research for the first time.

According to Prof. Clifter, the new school will serve as a platform for meeting and interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers who will be involved in its activities. It will also open its doors to students and scientists from abroad, promote international collaborations, and place an emphasis on receiving Israelis who return to us as part of the national effort known as 'bringing back minds'.

Prof. Clifter further noted that the Sagol School of Neuroscience was built on the solid foundations of interdisciplinary and diverse brain research, which has been taking place at Tel Aviv University for many years. Today, more than 70 highly accomplished researchers work in the various faculties in collaboration with the Adams Center for Brain Research and other dedicated institutes. Tel Aviv University was the first in Israel to develop study programs for a bachelor's degree in neuroscience. Its research activity in the field combines a fertile platform of basic research with advanced applied research, supported by 17 medical centers affiliated to the university.

To date, the brain researchers of Tel Aviv University have produced hundreds of patents and publications in leading scientific journals, and even have impressive achievements to their credit in the fight to eradicate a variety of serious diseases that originate in the brain.

International Brain Research Conference at the University of Haifa: Where is the memory kept?

Next week the University of Haifa will host an international conference of leading brain researchers in their field from Israel and the world who will try to answer the question: Where is memory found and preserved? Or in less simple words, "cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory creation". "The better we know where and how memory is formed, the more we can treat diseases related to the brain mechanisms of memory and forgetting, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's," said Prof. Kobi Rosenblum, head of the neurobiology department at the University of Haifa, who is organizing the conference together with Dr. Rafi Lamprecht.

About 5 neuroscientists from the world's leading universities will come to the international conference, which will take place Sunday-Tuesday (February 7.2-30), and will be joined by a similar number of researchers from Israel, all of whom deal with the various aspects of creating and consolidating memory in the brain, starting with the most basic molecular mechanisms to for advanced brain imaging. The conference is organized by the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Haifa, the Haifa Forum for Brain and Behavior Research of the University of Haifa and the Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society and will present over 100 of the newest studies in the field.

One of the highlights of the meeting will be an open discussion, in which the member of the psychology department at the university and winner of the Israel Prize, Prof. Asher Koriat, will present an approach that claims that the distance and the language that describes cognition and the language that describes material mechanisms are too far from each other, or in other words - molecular and electrophysiological brain researchers cannot really find explanations for a process like Preservation of memory, which is in the world of the soul. Dozens of neuroscientists will try to deal with these "arguments".

"The fact that an international conference of such magnitude was held at the University of Haifa testifies to the excellent basic research in the field of neurobiology at the university and the importance that we at the university attach to the subject. I am sure that the conference will bring us another step closer, even if a small one, to cracking the most complex puzzle of all - the human brain", Prof. Rosenblum concluded.