Neuroscience from different angles

The first EMBL student symposium on Neurobiology was held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany on October 20 and 21, 2000![][1] On October 20 and 21, 2000, over 200 students came to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany for a unique symposium. As the title ‘From genes to thoughts’ suggests, the symposium covered most aspects of modern neurobiology, from detailed structural studies to the most advanced models of in silico built neural networks. The idea came from a group of EMBL PhD students who invited 14 young researchers and leading scientists to give introductions into their fields of research, spiced with recent results. The meeting initiated a series of European student conferences that are fully organized by students and are held in an informal setting, with the aim of bringing interested students together with selected speakers from different disciplines of modern biology.### Molecular mechanisms of neural functionsJean‐Pierre Changeux (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France) opened the meeting with a general introduction to the hierarchical organization of the brain. During phylogeny and ontogeny, successively higher levels of neural complexity are established, making it impossible to mechanistically and directly define ‘thoughts’ from a mere analysis of genes. Changeux presented a model for how reward systems might stabilize circuits of neurons. He postulated that allosteric receptors could mediate the strengthening of synapses, discussing as an example the regulation of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChr). Showing some of his recent work, Changeux described mice lacking the β‐2 (nicotine binding) subunit of nAChr. On a behavioral level, a self‐administration test with nicotine revealed that the β‐2 knock‐out mice ‘smoked’ less than did the wild‐type controls. On a physiological level, administration of nicotine in the brain of knock‐out animals did not elicit the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter already known to be involved in many reward … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif