Barrels come of age: Barrels XXI meeting report

The twenty-first annual Barrels meeting, sponsored by NINDS, was held on 12-14 November 2008 on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, near the site of the original discovery of barrels almost 40 years ago. The longest running satellite meeting to the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting focuses on the development, physiology, and behavior of the rodent whisker-to-barrel sensorimotor system. This year's event focused on what aspects of the sensory world are encoded by neurons within the system and how specifically the posterior medial nucleus can play a role in information processing. Other highlighted topics included the possible role(s) the cerebellum may have and the cues governing the patterning and development of thalamocortical inputs into the barrel cortex.