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Credit: BIAL Foundation
What are the biological signatures of time? In the session on The Biology of Time, on April 8th, experts on psychology of time, neurophysiology, circadian biology and neural coding will discuss how time influences biological architectures, perceptual encoding and prediction of physical relations and social cognition.
Under the theme “The mystery of time”, the 13th Symposium of the BIAL Foundation gathers some of the most prominent scientists and philosophers to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue around the many aspects of time.
The second session, taking place on the morning of April 8th, is aimed at surveying the biology of time. Moderated by Miguel Castelo-Branco (Coimbra, PT), it features lectures by Julia Mossbridge (San Diego and Petaluma, USA), Michael Brecht (Berlin, DE), and Joseph S. Takahashi (Dallas, USA), who will examine how organisms have adapted to the passage of time: from biological clocks to the mechanisms of memory, from “pre-sponding” to circadian rhythms, the speakers will explore the many ways in which neural systems respond to time in the absence of specific receptors systems dedicated to perceive it.
Joseph S. Takahashi is a Japanese American neurobiologist and geneticist known for having discovered the genetic basis for the mammalian circadian clock in 1994 and also for having identified the Clock gene in 1997. In this session, Takahashi will focus on circadian clocks and their impact on metabolism, aging and longevity. His lecture will discuss recent discoveries on the neuronal network in the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
In addition to controlling the timing of behavior and physiology, the clock gene network interacts directly with many other pathways in the cell. These include metabolism, immune function, cardiovascular function and cell growth to name a few. Regarding the current diet trend known as ‘intermittent fasting’, Takahashi says that “with respect to metabolism, the timing of nutrient consumption is crucial, and we and others have shown that restricting the timing of feeding has many health benefits, being a critical factor for aging and longevity.
The morning will close with a keynote lecture by Wolf Singer (Frankfurt, DE), who will overview what sorts of mechanisms have evolved to make it possible for living things to be able to “parse” time. Among many other questions, the apparent paradox will be discussed that the perception of elapsed and remembered time is strongly dependent on context while the reproduction of temporally structured sequences can be extremely precise.
The Symposium “Behind and Beyond the Brain” will be held from April 6 to 9, 2022, at Casa do Médico, Porto, Portugal. The event will be organised in a hybrid format involving both in-person and virtual participants to be accessible to a wider audience. Registrations are open and available here.