The Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas, with its partners at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, will host the 10th annual Reprogramming the Brain to Health Symposium on Thursday, April 14.
The 10th annual Reprogramming the Brain to Health Symposium will be held at the Center for BrainHealth on April 14.
The symposium will explore neurology and computational psychiatry, a new interdisciplinary field that highlights the need for computational methods that can bridge the explanatory gap between biological processes and mental illness.
Dr. Karl Friston, the symposium’s keynote speaker, will receive the Dr. Charles L. Branch BrainHealth Award for his contributions to brain mapping and network-based analysis. Friston is Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow, the scientific director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, a professor at the Institute of Neurology at University College London, and an honorary consultant at the United Kingdom's National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
“Understanding the complexity of the brain and exploring how brain health research can lead to individualized treatment plans is the future of the field,” said Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth. “Dr. Friston is a pioneering, futuristic thinker who has contributed immeasurably to furthering brain health discoveries.”
Since 2010, the Dr. Charles L. Branch BrainHealth Award has honored neuroscientists who have made noteworthy breakthroughs in brain discoveries. The award is named after Branch, a leading research scholar, neurosurgeon, humanitarian and brain-mapping pioneer who trained with neurosurgeons Drs. Wilder Penfield and Theodore Rasmussen.
Previous recipients include: Dr. Marcus E. Raichle (2015), Dr. Floyd Bloom (2014), Dr. Daniel R. Weinberger (2013), Dr. Donald T. Stuss (2012), Dr. Joaquin Fuster (2011) and Dr. Michael Gazzaniga (2010).
Dr. Karl Friston will receive the Dr. Charles L. Branch BrainHealth Award.
“This symposium celebrates computational psychiatry — an emerging field that holds great promise for mental health and basic neuroscience,” Friston said. “Computational psychiatry provides a forum where we can address arguably the most challenging problem in science and health care — understanding how the brain works and what goes wrong in psychopathology. I am looking forward to quite a visionary symposium full of riveting conversations about radically new perspectives and opportunities for understanding psychopathology.”
Dr. Xiaosi Gu, assistant professor at the Center for BrainHealth and UT Dallas’ School Behavioral and Brain Sciences, curated the lineup of symposium speakers. In addition to Friston and Gu, they are:
- Dr. Read Montague, Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
- Dr. Sonia Bishop, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Dr. Peter Dayan, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London.
- Dr. John Krystal, Yale University School of Medicine.
- Dr. Peter Fox, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
- Dr. Mark D’Esposito, University of California, Berkeley.
Symposium attendees will learn about the most recent findings and methodologies in computational psychiatry while also participating in discussions with expert speakers to gain feedback about their own research.
Reprogramming the Brain to Health Symposium
When: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14
Where: Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas
2200 W. Mockingbird Lane
Dallas, TX 75235
For more information, the schedule of speakers or to register, click here.