Sensory Systems: Interoception and Exteroception - Abstract Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Sensory Systems: Interoception and Exteroception organized by Drs. Alexander Chesler, Stephen Liberles and Vanessa Ruta, with scientific programming input from Keystone Symposia. The meeting will take place January 18–21, 2027 at Keystone Resort in Keystone, Colorado, USA. Our basic external sensory systems—touch, taste, vision, hearing, and smell—enable us to perceive the world around us, and other sensory systems enable us to perceive and regulate internal states. Recent advances have revealed the molecular logic of how some sensory systems work, while other sensory systems remain uncharted. Fields of sensory biology often maintain separate cultures, and are at varying levels of maturity, with different frontiers, unknowns, and perspectives. The goal of this Keystone Symposia conference on Sensory Systems: Interoception and Exteroception is to bring leading experts from different sensory fields together, and to broadcast conceptual and technical advances achieved in one sensory system that may enable new findings in others. The conference program will highlight recent advances in each external sense: vision, olfaction, taste, hearing, and touch-pain-temperature sensation, as well as new developments in the emerging field of internal organ sensation. Speakers will discuss a range of topics from (1) receptors and sensory mechanisms, (2) neural circuits, (3) behavioral and physiological responses, and (4) the genetic basis of sensory deficits. Further, this meeting is being held concurrently with another Keystone Symposia conference on Neurobiology of Appetite Control, which has strong connections with the interoception programming in the Sensory Systems conference. This joint format allows a shared and more in-depth focus on an important area of interoception, notably the sensation and neurobiology of hunger and satiety, pathways that have emerged as the central targets of several new families of effective drugs for the treatment of obesity, diabetes and many other diseases. As a result, the joint meeting also creates a unique opportunity to bridge basic research in sensory systems with direct insight into next generation therapeutics that modulate brain-body communication.
