NeuWriteSD’s picks for SfN 2014!!!

Posted by socogal42 on November 13, 2014 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The annual Society for Neuroscience meeting begins this Saturday, November 15th and you can bet that NeuWriteSD will be there!  Many of us will be presenting our own work at the meeting as well as tweeting and blogging about it.  Below you can find out what we’re excited about for this year’s meeting as well as where you can come meet us and learn about our research.  See y’all in DC!

 

Saturday, November 15th:

• 11 am – 1pm: Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society: Food For Thought

“I’m a HUGE fan of Top Chef and cooking shows in general, so I’m incredibly excited to see Bryan Voltaggio speak at this year’s Dialogues talk.  There’s a very intense and profound link between food and memory, so it’s going to be interesting to hear it approached from both the neuroscience and culinary views.” ~Maya S.

• 1:30 pm – 4 pm: Empirical Approaches to Neuroscience and Society: Improving Animal Models of Neuropsychiatric Disorders

“Right now, it’s pretty hard for translational research to push through clinical trials to make big impacts in improving treatments for schizophrenia and depression. I’m hoping to learn about cool animal models from scientists as well as gain insight on the industry side of neuropsychiatric research.” ~Melissa G.

“Modeling neuropsychiatric disorders (like major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and autism) is really difficult to do well. But if it can be done, our understanding of the pathophysiology of these disorders and the development of potential therapeutics (heretofore agonizingly slow) may finally progress with the rest of neuroscience.  It’ll be interesting to hear suggestions from both academic and industrial perspectives from the likes of Eric Nestler and Hugh Marston (Head of In Vivo Pharmacology at Eli Lilly).” ~Kerin

• 1:30 pm – 4 pm: Evolution of Neural Circuits: From Axon Guidance Genes to Spoken Language

“This Symposium will tackle the daunting task of connecting the molecular events on which evolution operates all the way up to complex behavior.  While this is impossible to do justice to in 4 short talks, I’m curious to see how far the speakers can take it.” ~Jason K.

• 1:00 pm – 5 pm: Maya S presents “Rodents with lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex path integrate normally despite working memory deficits” at RR30

 

Sunday, November 16th:

• 8:30 am – 11 am: Enhancing Reproducibility of Neuroscience Studies

“Reproducibility is a top close to my heart (see my post “Luxury Journals”, Incentives, and the Fallacy of Being “Right“). I am happy to see a talk devoted to this topic. I am especially looking forward to hearing multiple perspectives on this topic, from both publishers and the NIH.” ~Cailey

• 8:00 am – 12:00 pm: Kerin presents “Mice lacking alpha7 nicotinic receptors have low hit rate-driven inattention but remain subject to nicotine withdrawal-induced inattention via response disinhibition”

• 8:00 am – 12:00 pm: Melissa G. presents “Methamphetamine differentially affects brain-derived neurotrophic factor and cell death factors in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus: A new risk factor for methamphetamine abuse” at AA24
• 11:30 am – 12:40 pm: Mind, Brain and the Ethics of Intergroup Behavior

“The annual David Kopf lecture on neuroethics is always on my must-see list for SfN, and this year is no exception. I’ll be heading to Hall D on Sunday at 11:30 am for Mind, Brain, and the Ethics of Intergroup Behavior. As an extension of her work on unconscious bias, Mahzarin Banaji from Harvard will speak about how group memberships in human society have shaped our brains, and vice versa. Dr. Banaji is one of the premiere researchers on implicit bias, and has spent decades uncovering the cognitive bases of how we think about ourselves verses others. This social psychology talk is sure to spark some interesting conversation, as well as a reflection on how we should operate as a species.” ~Ashley J

• 1:30 pm: Tommy S. gives a talk on “Mnemonic representations in human occipital, parietal, and frontal cortex index visuospatial working memory acuity”

 

Monday, November 17th

• 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm: 11th Annual Christopher Reeve “Hot Topics in Stem Cell Biology Data Blitz” where Rachel T. will be giving a data blitz talk

 

Tuesday, November 18th

• 8:00 am – 12:00 pm: Cailey presents “Highly precise hippocampal synaptic plasticity” at G8

 

Wednesday, November 19th

• 8:00 am – 12:00 pm: Rachel T presents “Novel transcription factor combinations induce distinct neuronal subtypes directly from fibroblasts” at A8