Special Honor for SynSignal Member

The 37^th Blankenese Conference was dedicated to Prof. Wolfgang Meyerhof (Principal Investigator of DifE), on the occasion of his retirement this year. Under the topic “Synaptic Plasticity versus Stability: Information Uptake, Processing, and Coding” Wolfgang Meyerhof, Conference Co-Chairman since 2004, welcomed internationally acclaimed speakers to the beautiful Elsa-Brändström-Haus in Hamburg-Blankenese from May 6^th to 10^th, 2017. The conference was opened with a lecture on odorant signaling and coding by biologist and Nobel Laureate Linda B. Buck (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center). One of the other invited experts was SynSignal Coordinator Professor Horst Vogel (Principal Investigator of EPFL) who presented the latest results of the project.

The program was divided into 7 sessions that addressed recent developments in the fields of information uptake, processing, and coding by the nervous system. Central themes included were the structural and functional plasticity at synapses, activity-dependent trafficking, chemosensory receptors, olfactory bulb circuitry, learning and context dependent perception as well as the impact of physiological state on information processing.

The Blankenese Conference was established in 1979 and since then meetings have been held almost on a yearly basis. Previous conferences covered topics in cell biology, genetics, virology and neurobiology.