August 17 – 19 , 2026 | Irvine Marriott, Irvine, California, USA
The 2026 Summer Conference on “Neural Circuits in Health and Disease” (August 17–19, 2026), jointly sponsored by the CNCM and the Cajal Club and co-hosted by the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Center for Advanced Pain Studies, the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School, will be held at the Irvine Marriott (2.6 miles from UCI), located at 18000 Von Karman Avenue, Irvine, California 92612, USA. This conference will provide a platform to discuss and explore how neural circuits operate under normal conditions and in disease states—knowledge that is essential for developing innovative treatments for neurological disorders.
The 2026 meeting topics are timely and highly significant. Dr. Gord Fishell is leading the 2026 conference organization, along with Drs. Lin Tian, Ted Price, and Xiangmin Xu. Six scientific sessions will cover: 1) Multi-omics and Multimodal Approaches to Circuit Mapping, 2) Cell-Type-Specific Tools and Circuit Dissection, 3) Emerging Technologies in Neural Recording and Imaging, 4) Circuit Mechanisms of Brain Disorders, 5) Pain, Emotion, and Motivation, and 6) Computational Neuroscience and Neural Circuit Modeling.
In addition to the main conference proceedings, attendees will have opportunities to participate in specialized workshops. These will be held on the UC Irvine campus and will offer hands-on experiences, allowing for deep dives into specific subtopics and methodologies. Well-aligned with the NINDS mission, the conference will promote the understanding and treatment of brain disorders through basic and clinical research, and will support communication between scientists, physicians, health-care providers, and the public about neuroscience advances and brain health research progress. For the 2026 CNCM conference, the organizers aim to build upon previous scientific, educational, and science communication achievements by assembling a fresh new program with new speakers presenting cutting-edge and innovative projects, including novel topics not covered in earlier conferences or other similar events.
The conference will therefore be an excellent opportunity for interaction amongst researchers at all career stages. Attendees are encouraged to submit abstracts, which will be selected for short talks or poster presentations. Abstracts will be included in the conference program book.