Alpert Medical School and the New York Academy of Sciences will sponsor a conference on the emerging field of behavioral epigenetics Oct. 29 and 30, according to a recent announcement on the New York Academy of Sciences website.
The conference will take place at the University of Massachusetts Boston Campus Center, bringing together a host of world-class leaders in the field, as well as people who are just starting out in it, said Carmen Marsit, assistant professor of pathology and lab medicine, who will speak at the conference. Epigenetics, the study of how environmental changes can affect the expression of genes, has only recently been used to discern the relationships between the environment and the behavior of an organism.
The new field, behavioral epigenetics, is "the application of epigenetic principles to the study of behavior" said Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Barry Lester, who is organizing next week's conference. Hopefully these ideas can provide an objective way of understanding the importance of the environment to behavior, Marsit said.
In addition to marking the start of a new discipline, Marsit said, the conference ideally should be a forum for the exchange of techniques and methods of researching and developing the field, as well as a way to introduce younger members of the scientific community to behavioral epigenetics. For example, Marsit has two undergraduates that will attend.
Lester said that while behavioral epigenetics is a highly promising field — dealing with such issues as drug abuse, abnormal development and psychological disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — hopefully the conference will not only communicate the basic mechanisms and concepts of the field, but also what it can and cannot do.
