Neuroscience 2023 Places Spotlight on Discovery, Industry Collaboration

The Society for Neuroscience will hold its 2023 annual meeting Nov. 11-15 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Society members and attending nonmembers will join to discover new ideas, share the latest in research, and attend on-site presentations and industry events. The convention’s content will be fully available in person, with limited virtual options available to registrants.

A Presidential Special Lecture from Erin Schuman of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, will discuss previous and current studies aimed at understanding the diversity of synapse types and functional states by local cell biological mechanisms. Schuman’s lecture, “Cell Biology at the Synapse: Local Protein Synthesis and Degradation,” will consider the ability of neurons to carry thousands of synapses while relying on a single source of mRNA. Additional Presidential Special Lectures will be given by Sara Tabrizi, of the University College London (UCL) Queens Square Institute of Technology and U.K. Dementia Research Institute at UCL; Zhigang He, of Boston Children’s Hospital; and Richard Huganir, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. These lectures are titled “New Genetic Therapies for Huntington’s Disease and other Neurodegenerative Diseases”; “Regenerative Axons and Re-Establishing Connections for Neural Repair”; and “Receptors, Synapses, and Memories,” respectively.

The Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Neuroscience 2023 kicks off Nov. 11 and runs through Nov. 15. Courtesy of Events DC.

Additional lectures will cover topics from the complexities of emotion on the brain to why people feel itch. In a featured lecture, Stanford University’s Karl Deisseroth will discuss the “Inner Workings of Channelrhodopsins and Nervous Systems.” Deisseroth’s lecture will cover initial high-resolution structures of each of the three major classes of a family of light-activated membrane proteins — the outcome of which includes a deeper understanding of the fundamental survival drives of animals.

Numerous symposia and minisymposia are included in this year’s program, with a focus on themes such as color processing, research into autism spectrum disorder, motor and cognitive systems, and place cells. A “Meet the Experts” series, with live, one-hour webinars after the conclusion of Neuroscience 2023, will include a “Meet the Clinician Expert” series. Webinars will include M. Eugenia Chiappe, of the Champalimaud Foundation’s “Go with the Visual Flow: An Experimentalist’s Path to Understanding Movement Control”; and Tulane University’s Matthew Dalva, who will speak on “Seeing into the Synapse: Exploring a Nanoscale World.”

Additionally, guests will have the opportunity to attend numerous professional development workshops, events geared toward networking, and public outreach sessions hosted by neuroscientists. A “Product Theater” will include 30-minute presentations or product demonstrations from exhibitors. Exhibitors featured will be Bruker, Harvard Bioscience, MilliporeSigma, and Evident Scientific.

Neuorscience 2023 exhibitors include Bruker, Harvard Bioscience, and Evident Scientific. Courtesy of the Society of Neuroscience.

For information about Neuroscience 2023, visit www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2023.