The Skin : Our Sensory Organ for Itch, Pain, Touch, and Pleasure

A primary objective of this meeting will be to bring together research expertise from the domains of the skin, brain, and cognitive sciences, to focus in depth upon the roles of the skin in inter-relationships between somatic sensation, perception, and behavior in health and disease. They will present topics from varied disciplines in the skin and brain/mind sciences to address itch, pain, touch and pleasure, focusing on the peripheral nervous system in the skin and in particular the C-fiber system. Speakers and participants will be drawn from a number of fields, including dermatology, neuroanatomy, neurobiology, molecular biology, genetics/epigenetics, cognition and emotion, social and affective neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience in order to examine current knowledge and forge future strategies to understand the structural-functional basis of itch, pain, touch and pleasure.

They will address issues of differences in nerve types and nerve functions in the skin, including how nerves in the skin affect skin function and other skin cells, adnexal structures, and processes such as normal homeostasis, wound healing and inflammatory disease. The neurosciences and skin biology are inherently inter- and intra-disciplinary. This symposium will provide an opportunity for researchers to learn, discuss, and debate topics in fields outside but related to their own, new insights and directions will be identified and new therapeutic strategies - pharmacological and behavioral - will be explored.