We are organizing a three-­day workshop in September 2015 that will be held in a wonderful location - the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, which is located in the Palais de la Berbie, just next to the Medieval Cathedral in Albi.  Albi is a beautiful city, on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and is well worth the visit -even without the attraction of the meeting!  

The symposium will be built around roughly 20 presentations by prestigious invited speakers, coupled with round table discussions and poster sessions. The theme will be centered on the brain mechanisms underlying very long-term sensory memories - essentially, how it is that we can recognize sensory stimuli that we haven't re-experienced for years or even decades.

These issues are at the core of Simon Thorpe's M4 ERC project that is specifically aimed at testing a series of 10 provocative claims about the mechanisms that could potentially underlie such phenomena. But the meeting will be a chance to look at all the current ideas relating to long-term memory mechanisms. These include, for example, the mechanisms underlying episodic and autobiographical memories, the role of oscillations, the importance of implicit learning processes and the role of consciousness. We will be particularly interested is looking at the roles of specific brain structures including the neocortex and hippocampus. The approach will be extremely interdisciplinary, bringing together psychologists, neuroscientists, theoreticians and modelers.

The meeting will start with a introductory cocktail on the evening of Tuesday the 22nd of September 2015, and finish at the end of the afternoon on Friday the 25th of September. There will be a half day for sightseeing on the Thursday afternoon, together with a Gala banquet. For those who would like to stay a bit longer, we will be able to organize trips to Cordes-sur‐Ciel  on the Saturday.

For more information, please contact one of the organizers at project-M4@cerco.ups-‐tlse.fr