BSCB Newsletter, Spring 2010 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 17-21 October 2009. Chicago, IL The annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience is probably the best attended and widest ranging meeting on the neuroscience calendar. This year more than 30,000 people descended on Chicago to enjoy all that the meeting had to offer. Thanks to an Honor Fell Travel award from the BSCB I was able to join them. The meeting began on Saturday morning on the light-hearted note with presentations by internationally renowned magicians Apollo Robbins and Eric Mead. Their impressive display of forcing a member of the audience to selectively forget a particular item in a list, and pick-pocketing another scientist from the audience was followed by an interesting discussion and question session on the neuroscience of memory and attention. Later the same day there was a Special Lecture by Liqun Luo (Stanford University, USA), who discussed techniques developed for both Drosophila and mice that allow the visualisation and manipulation of specific neurons and neural circuits. Professor Luo described his methods that can label small numbers of neurons, and allows the study of the connectivity and functions of particular neuronal types. The theme of neuronal circuit manipulation and formation was very strong at the meeting, and closely aligned with my own research interests. A symposium on Saturday afternoon, to showcase various new technologies for probing neuronal circuits with light, was extremely well attended, with many people having to stand at the back or sit on the floor around the conference room. Among the speakers was Mark Schnitzer (Stanford University, USA) who described some very interesting methods his lab had developed for imaging the activity of neuronal circuits in behaving animals. Maiken Nedergaard (University of Rochester, USA) went on to described her work on the role of astrocytes (glial cells found in the brain) in neuronal network activity, these cells are often overlooked in the study of the brain and this talk gave an interesting insight into the roles of these cells in neuronal circuit activity, as well as showcasing the methods that had been developed to study the activity of these cells in the nervous system.  The Sunday program was again packed with a variety of posters and symposia. The highlight for me though, was the Fred Kavli Distinguished International Scientist lecture given by Daniel Wolpert (University of Cambridge). Professor Wolpert made the case that the study of human motor control is one of the most important aspects of neuroscience, because ultimately movement is the main output from the brain. Although the talk contained aspects of human psychology and even Bayesian statistics, and so was somewhat removed from my own main interests, I found the seminar very engaging. This highlights one of the best aspects of the Neuroscience meeting – being able to explore different subjects that you would not normally be exposed to. Monday morning began with looking at some of the hundreds of posters that were on display at any one time. This included one from S.W. Oh from the Allen Institute for Brain Science (USA), which described an ambitious project to begin mapping the connections of different neuronal types in the mouse brain. Using a combination of viral vectors activated by Cre-recombinase, transgenic mice and fluorescent proteins it was possible to label individual neuron types and trace their connections. If the success of the Institute’s Mouse Brain Atlas is anything to go by then this project is likely to give a number of important insights into the connectivity patterns of neurons. In the same session Sarah Rogan (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA) described her laboratory’s method for controlling the activity of neural circuits by expression of DREADD receptors in particular neuron types. This receptor has no endogenous ligand in mice, but by driving its expression in specific neurons and giving an intraperitoneal injection of its ligand the activity of these neurons could be selectively altered. After the poster session I had the chance to experience a new format for presentations that had been introduced this year. Called nanosymposia, these were designed to be a group of around 10 abstracts that were linked by topic (or even from the same laboratory), with 10 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions. They were specifically aimed to give graduate students and postdoctoral fellows a chance to present their work in a smaller setting than in a full symposium. I attended the axon regeneration nanosymposium. Among the talks was one from Kevin Park of Zhigang He’s laboratory (Harvard Medical School, USA), who described how they could manipulate the mTor signalling pathway with adeno-associated viruses to promote regeneration of damaged retinal ganglion cells. The format seemed to work very well and I’m sure it will be a feature of future meetings. The scientific sessions each day were concluded by the Presidential Special Lecture. These featured some of the most renowned neuroscientists from around the world and usually made a very interesting conclusion to each day. By far the best attended of these, and probably the most widely attended session of the whole conference was the Presidential Special Lecture by Eric Kandel (Columbia University, USA). Professor Kandel’s long and distinguished career has focussed on studying the mechanisms underlying memory formation. The session began with a description of Professor Kandel’s career, given by Tom Carew (University of California, Irvine, USA), the current president of SFN and a former member of the Kandel laboratory. Professor Kandel then described his work in both the sea slug Aplysia and in mice that has really shaped our current understanding of  how memories are encoded and stored in the brain. The talk was inspiring and for me one of the main highlights of the conference. The final day of the conference was when I was due to present my own poster. Being scheduled on the last day I had been concerned the attendance would be much reduced as many delegates took the opportunity to catch an early flight home, or to explore Chicago one last time. However, the meeting was as busy as it had been all week. My session started at 8 am and I received a lot of interest in my work, and spoke to a continual stream of people until my session was over. I received a number of interesting comments and suggestions that were extremely useful and helpful. Many of the comments I received were particularly helpful in that they came from people outside of my normal field and gave a different perspective on the work, reflecting the wide variety of interests and specialities that are represented at SFN. After the poster session it was time for me to go to the airport and catch my flight home. My poster session turned out to be the perfect end to what had been an interesting and exciting meeting, and I thank the BSCB for their support, which made my attendance possible. Andrew Murray School of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen