The Optical Society (OSA; Washington, D.C.) has created a new topical meeting, Optics and the Brain, which will take place in conjunction with the OSA Optics in the Life Sciences Congress in Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 12-16, 2015. The event will serve as a forum for discussing existing and emerging techniques and future directions for shedding new light on the healthy and diseased brain.
Since it was first announced in 2013, the OSA has been finding ways to suppport President Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, which is designed to help find new ways to treat, cure, and possibly prevent brain disorders and diseases. For information on OSA’s efforts in supporting the BRAIN Initiative, visit: www.osa.org/braininitiative.
General Co-Chair of the new meeting, Elizabeth Hillman of Columbia University, says “The research community has already made great progress in discovering new ways to probe the brain, but it is critical that new forums are established where developers and users of technologies can bring their work together, form new collaborations, and leverage each other’s strengths. We hope that this meeting will provide a new home for this burgeoning area of research, ensuring that progress can be made even faster.”
Optics and the Brain was formed as a result of a successful OSA incubator meeting on Spatially Precise Optogenetics at Depth held in 2013. The meeting will feature sessions on:
- Functional brain microscopy techniques
- Optogenetics and optical modulation tools and techniques
- Novel contrast and genetic approaches for brain imaging and modulation
- Optics in the human brain
- Structural and multiscale brain imaging
- Brain macroscopy and hybrid techniques
For more information, click here to visit the meeting website.