WHAT: The Center for Sensory Biology Inaugural Symposium
"Sensory Biology: Understanding Our Windows to the World"

WHO: Nine experts in sensory biology (see full list, next page) present their current findings to an audience of more than 200 key scientists

WHEN: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday, Nov. 13, 2006

WHERE: Vernon B. Mountcastle Auditorium
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
725 N. Wolfe St.
Baltimore, MD 21205

Animals including people have over eons developed intricately specialized systems to sense, process and interpret information from the outside world. Research to uncover the molecular players in these systems has revealed that very similar chemistry and biology are involved in seemingly very different sensory activities such as vision, hearing and touch, pain and temperature sensation.

The newly established Center for Sensory Biology in the Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences at Johns Hopkins is believed the first and only of its kind to combine laboratories studying all the senses in one location.

To kick off this new multidisciplinary collaboration, the Center will present investigators' latest findings from research at Hopkins and elsewhere at an all-day symposium.

Find out how the retina detects light; how hair cells of the inner ear sense sound; how cells and molecules link up to build the sense of smell; why pain is mainly in the brain and how our skin feels temperature changes.

"Light detection in the retina"
King-Wai Yau, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

"Biochemical mechanisms of visual pigment regeneration in the vertebrate retina"
Gabriel H. Travis, M.D., Professor of Ophthalmology and Biological Chemistry
Jules Stein Eye Institute, UCLA School of Medicine