Hi everyone,

I found out about this lecture and symposium series on Neuroscience and Child Development that I thought I would pass along. Just RSVP using the link before if you want to attend.

Inaugural Lecture – Friday, October 4th at 3:00PM
“From Neurons to Neighborhoods”

Uris Auditorium at Weill Cornell Medical College (1300 York Avenue)

Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. will discuss his work, which is focused on the science of early childhood development. Dr. Shonkoff is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. He is also the Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. His work has been essential to our understanding the importance of the period of infancy in the context of lifespan development. Andrew Solomon, Winner of the National Book Award and Author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity will moderate the discussion.

Symposium – Saturday October 5 th from 8:30AM to 6:00 PM

Sackler Institute Symposium on Recent Advances in Infant Research
Italian Academy at Columbia University 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (btwn 116 th and 118 th Streets)

Registration Required – No fee – Link to RSVP

This Symposium is designed to bring together the world’s experts studying infant development and highlight the recent progress in this area and is comprised of the following 5 sessions:

Session 1 – Perception and Neurobiological Reactivity – Chair: William Fifer, PhD

• Developmental origins of neurobiological responses to stress – W. Thomas Boyce, MD
• Environmental influences on the development of attention and memory in infancy – Dima Amso, PhD

Session 2 – Caregiver/Infant Interaction – Chair: Catherine Monk, PhD

• Mother-toddler interactions that communicate the gist of past violence: toward understanding and change – Daniel Schechter, MD, CC
• When normal caregiver-infant interaction fails: the tragic case of shaken baby syndrome – Ronald Barr, MDCM

Session 3 – Adoption/Foster Care – Chair: B.J. Casey, PhD

• The role of relationships in recovery from severe deprivation – Charles Zeanah, Jr, MD
• Human limbic-cortical development following early caregiving adversity – Nim Tottenham, PhD

Session 4 – Attachment – Chair: Myron Hofer, MD

• Effects of parental care on gene expression and brain development – Michael Meaney, PhD
• The space between: vitalization and the relation between two brains – Karlen Lyons-Ruth, PhD

Session 5 – Autism in Infancy – Chair: Andrew Gerber, MD, PhD

• Growing into and sometimes out of autism in early years – Catherine Lord, PhD
• A cognitive neuroscience approach to the early identification of autism – Charles Nelson, PhD

You will be given a one-hour lunch break (on your own) from 12:00 to 1:00 between Sessions 2 and 3.

Please contact Heidi Fitterling at 212-543-6904 or hlf2010@columbia.edu if you have any questions

(Contributed by Kimberley Goonie)