When: September 14, 2005, 3:00
Where: NIH Campus, Masur Auditorium, Bethesda, MD
Institute: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

The NIH Director’s lecture on Wednesday, September 14, at 3:00 p.m., will be titled “Messenger Molecules of Life and Death,” and will be presented by Solomon H. Snyder, M.D., director of the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a longtime grantee of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Snyder will describe a newly discovered chemical pathway that is essential for normal cell death to occur, and strategies for blocking the process. His work in this area might one day lead to treatments for neurologic disorders, such as stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

A psychiatrist by training, Dr. Snyder has been called the “godfather of synaptic chemistry” because of his ground-breaking work on synapses, the point at which one brain cell transmits a message to another through the release of special chemicals.

Next Steps
The lecture is free and no registration is required.

Visitors to the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, should bring a photo ID and allow additional time for security procedures. All vehicles will be inspected and visitor badges issued at the NIH Gateway vehicle inspection station. Visitor badges will be issued to pedestrians at either the NIH Gateway Center, at Metro (24/7), or the NIH West Visitor Center, Old Georgetown Road and South Drive (5 a.m. to 9 p.m. only). Call 301-594-6677 for more information, or visit the Web site at www.nih.gov/about/visitor/index.htm.

For more information or for reasonable accommodation, contact Hilda Madine at 301-594-5595. Sign language interpretation will be provided. Dr. Snyder’s lecture will be webcast and can be viewed at http://videocast.nih.gov.

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