In this memoir, we study the even unimodular lattices of rank at most 24, as well as a related collection of automorphic forms of the orthogonal and symplectic groups of small rank. Our guide is the question of determining the number of p-neighborhoods, in the sense of M. Kneser, between two isometry classes of such lattices. We prove a formula for this number, in which occur certain Siegel modular forms of genus 1 and 2. It has several applications, such as the proof of a conjecture of G. Nebe and B. Venkov about the linear span of the higher genus theta series of the Niemeier lattices, the computation of the p-neighborhoods graphs of the Niemeier lattices (the case p = 2 being due to Borcherds), or the proof of a congruence conjectured by G. Harder. Classical arguments reduce the problem to the description of the automorphic representations of a suitable integral form of the euclidean orthogonal group of R^24 which are unramified at each finite prime and trivial at the archimedean prime. The recent results of J. Arthur suggest several new approaches to this type of questions. This is the other main theme that we develop in this memoir. We give a number of other applications, for instance to the classification of Siegel modular cuspforms of weight at most 12 for the full Siegel modular group.