Several faculty members of the Department of Anesthesiology recently returned from Bonn, Germany and the Ninth Mechanisms of Anesthesia Conference (MAC), held June 17-19, 2015. The MAC brings together researchers from all over the world to discuss and share advances in the study of anesthesia and the processes that drive it. Peter Goldstein, MD, Hugh Hemmings, MD, PhD, Alexander Proekt, MD, PhD, Kane Pryor, MD, and Robert Veselis, MD (primary appointment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) were participants in the conference’s symposiums and workshops.
Formally known as the International Conference on Mechanisms of Anesthesia, MAC has been held periodically since 1974, when the conference began under the direction of Dr. Raymond Fink. The conference is centered around six symposia. These are designed to provide participants with an overview of a general topic in anesthesia and discuss current research. According to MAC, the conference discussed “topics dealing with in-vitro and in-vivo mechanisms of anaesthetic actions, includ[ing] interactions of local and general anaesthetics with membranes and electrically excitable channels, intracellular signaling, cellular and synaptic functions, neuronal networks, as well as in-vivo recording and imaging techniques.” MAC 2015 was hosted by the University of Bonn and held at the campus of the Gustav-Stresemann-Institute in Bonn.
The Weill Cornell faculty present played integral roles in many of the conferences’ symposiums. Dr. Hemmings chaired the “Role of GABAA receptors in anesthetic action”, and both he and Dr. Goldstein were participants in “Anesthetic sites and effects on voltage-gated ion channels.” Dr. Proket was a participant in “Neural circuit mechanisms of general anesthesia.” Dr. Veselis and Dr. Pryor each presented at “Memory formation during anesthesia: dark side of the moon”. In addition to symposium presentations, Dr. Goldstein was also part of the workshop, “Modulation of thalamocortical circuits by anesthetics: insights from in vitro studies.”
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