Keystone Symposia on Neuroepigenetics—bridging the gap between genome and behavior

Abstract

The Keystone Symposium on Neuroepigenetics (Santa Fe, NM, USA, February 22–26, 2015) brought together outstanding researchers to discuss their latest findings in the field of epigenetic regulation of gene expression in the nervous system. This has been the first conference entirely devoted to the integration of the fields of epigenetics and neuroscience. The goal of the symposium was to raise new challenging questions and to stimulate innovative ideas fostered by the provocative results presented by experts working in a wide array of epigenetic systems and generated by a variety of experimental approaches in many model systems. This report will discuss a number of groundbreaking discoveries presented at the symposium encompassing studies of human evolution, nervous system development, adult brain plasticity, transgenerational inheritance, mental disorders, and large-scale efforts to generate detailed reference epigenomes. The outcome of the symposium provided new exciting perspectives and the framework for expanding the frontiers of neuroscience research.