2025 Amygdala Function in Emotion, Cognition and Disease Gordon Research Conference and Seminar - The Amygdala Function in Emotion, Cognition & Disease Gordon Research Conference (GRC) is the eighth biennial installment of a five-day meeting scheduled for July 13-18, 2025 at Rey Don Jaime Grand Hotel, Castelldefels, to be chaired by Prof. Kate Wassum, with vice chairs Profs. Jose Rodríguez-Romaguera and Anna Beyeler. The amygdala is a central node within brain systems subserving an array of higher-order behaviors that are disturbed in many psychiatric illnesses. The focus of the meeting reflects an ongoing shift in psychiatry towards framing the study of mental illness including substance use disorders in terms of aberrant neural circuit functions. Interest in the amygdala, a brain structure known to play a pivotal role in emotional and cognitive processes, has increased considerably in recent years. Indeed, there is marked overlap in the amygdala plasticity mechanisms found to be disrupted in models of, for example, addiction and anxiety. A central goal of the meeting is to integrate multiple emotional and cognitive processes and pathological states, including pain, addiction, anxiety, and depression into the permanent fabric of this GRC by including a number of the sessions that explicitly focus on these areas of research, with talks from NIDA-, NIMH-, NINDS-, and NIAAA-funded leaders. The objectives are threefold: 1) Foster interactions across disciplines from basic discovery research to translational research on the role of the amygdala in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral processes in physiological and pathological states. These functions range from fear, stress, reward, learning, and decision making to pain, substance use disorder, or anxiety disorders. 2) Highlight important new tools and techniques that may be applied to the study of the amygdala, with the hope of opening new scientific questions and avenues of research. 3) Mentor a new generation of scientists and scientist-clinicians, The meeting features oral presentations from recognized world leaders in the study of emotion, cognition, behavior, and mental illness such as anxiety disorders or substance use disorder. The GRC will be preceded by a GRS, a unique two-day forum for graduate students, postdocs, and other early- career scientists to present and exchange new data and cutting-edge ideas. In addition, we will continue our successful mentoring program that pairs junior and senior scientists as a means to invigorate interactions between scientists.