Openness in the public debate on animal research has been increasing in many European countries and research institutions. Since the 2014 launch of the UK Concordat on Openness on Animal Research, research institutions in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland have also adopted policies and practices that seek to improve transparency with the public. The event is designed to support researchers and institutions that wish to be more open about the animal research they conduct. The focal theme of the workshop is to discuss how and why scientists, researchers, press officers and other stakeholders should talk about animal research; it is not a debate about the ethics of animal experimentation.

The earth’s climate is undoubtedly changing. Although scientists are, to a large extent, receptive of this fact and aware of the causes and consequences of the current environmental crisis, identifying what we can do as a community, at the level of laboratories, research institutions and individually as scientists remains elusive. This special interest event offers a forum to discuss what we can do to adopt a more sustainable model for life-sciences. The organizers will present the results of a small survey performed among neuroscientists and their research institutes to trigger the discussion on the environmental footprint of our community and to start identifying solutions. A panel of academics, activists and life-science industry representatives, among others, will share their viewpoints and experiences implementing concrete actions towards an environmentally friendly life-science framework. In addition to raising awareness on the impact of life sciences on the environment, we will highlight the need to better measure and document this impact, including plastic and Co2 emissions in scientific events and research centers. We also aim to draw up a list of concrete actions that define gold-standards of sustainability for our scientific community. Join us and add your voice to this exciting discussion!

Improve your public presentation skills, create a story around your research or learn how to best answer journalists questions in this series of three workshops delivered by science communication specialist, Malcolm Love! This SiE includes a 10-min interactive Q&A session.

The cerebral cortex represents the largest brain area and consists of an extraordinary number and diversity of neurons and glial cells. Yet, how the cortex, with all its neuronal circuits, arises from the neural stem cells (NSCs) in the developing neuroepithelium is a major unsolved question. In our symposium we will focus on a key aspect of cortical development: what are the mechanisms in NSCs regulating the balance between proliferation and differentiation to specify the cerebral cortex of its correct size and composition? The specific objectives shall address 1) the principles of NSC lineage progression during cortical development; 2) the cellular and molecular mechanisms controlling neuron and glia output from NSCs; 3) how disruption of NSC behavior upon mutation of particular signaling pathways leads to cortical malformation and 4) how cell-intrinsic and niche-derived factors interact to regulate NSC behavior. We will present novel conceptual advances with the ultimate goal to synthesize a general framework how intrinsic programs in NSCs in combination with extrinsic niche components regulate neuron genesis within the neurogenic microenvironment. Altogether, the symposium will focus not only on the developmental mechanisms of corticogenesis, but also include aspects of molecular neuroscience, cell biology, and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disease neuroscience. We are convinced that our symposium will thus be of interest to a broad audience of neuroscientists.

The hippocampus is critical for the formation of episodic memories, and we are just beginning to understand how the hippocampus forms associations between stimuli in both time and space. In this workshop, we will explore recent work on the formation of associations and memories in the human hippocampus. These studies use recordings of single-neuron activity in the hippocampus of epilepsy patients implanted with electrodes for clinical diagnostics. In our workshop, Rodrigo Quian Quiroga will first present how single neurons act in the dynamic formation of associations in the human hippocampus. Johannes Sarnthein will then present how persistent firing of single neurons in the medial temporal lobe is embedded in the cortical working memory network. Doris Dijksterhuis will describe how single cells in the hippocampus form rapid links between words in a sentence reading task. Finally, Florian Mormann will show how long-term memory of complex items is reflected in long-term recordings of concept cells in the hippocampus. The speakers will present an overview of their research with human single neurons in Europe with high scientific interest internationally. The recent data extend knowledge from animal experiments to the complex tasks amenable only in humans. The existing models of cognitive processing should be tested on these data and possibly adapted.

Over the past years, an increasing body of work investigating the biology of RNA-protein interplay has shed novel insights into neuronal homeostasis and pathology while the unique biology of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and Stress granules (SGs) is altering our view of the genesis of protein misfolding diseases. While, stressed cells shut down translation, release mRNA from ribosomes, and form SGs that may cause neurodegeneration, the etiopathogenic relationship between these activities remains enigmatic. This symposium will present recent and unpublished (human- and animal-based) findings about the etiopathogenic implications of RBPs and SGs in a broad spectrum of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’ diseases (AD and PD), Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Stress-driven depression. Dr Hornstein (Israel) will present a full proteomic analysis of stress granule disassembly while Dr Taoufik (Greece) will focus on the RBPs role in synaptic and axonal degeneration in PD. Prof. Wolozin(USA) will present the essential role of TIA-1, another RBP, in the formation of SGs and its causal relationship to oligomerization and spreading of Tau pathology while Dr Sotiropoulos (Portugal) will describe the implication of RBPs and SGs into the mechanisms which lifetime (environmental) stress, a risk factor for AD, trigger autophagy inhibition and Tau aggregation precipitating AD pathology.

Even for the same task, one rarely observes the exact same cortical response twice. Such variability is ubiquitous throughout the brain, and is observed at all spatial scales, from single synapse function to collective activity of entire brain areas. Is variability merely a result of unavoidable noise in the system, or is it harnessed and even enforced by the brain as an integral part of computation? Variability is a highly timely topic; its ubiquitous presence is becoming clearer than ever, thanks to the massively parallel data being recorded currently. At the same time, insight into variability is crucial for understanding the neural code that these data allow us to investigate with unprecedented detail. Typically, studies into variability either take a descriptive approach, quantifying what kind of factors reduce variability; or a constructive approach, deriving the significance of variability for brain function. In this workshop, we bring together the descriptive and constructive perspectives. Kenneth Harris and Timothy O’Leary will discuss the properties of variability in brain-wide population activity and smaller neural circuits; Anna Levina and Christian Machens will derive the benefits and detriments of variability for brain function. Our speakers are 50% junior and 25% female, and are from three European countries: Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal. Including the organizers, we comprise 67% junior and 50% female faculty representing four nationalities.