Read advocacy news from the week of February 26, 2016.

Below is a list and description of all speaker tasks. Not all tasks are applicable to each sessions. You will only be assigned the tasks relevant to your session. Tasks marked with an asterisk (*) are only assigned to certain presentation types. You will receive a personal link to complete these tasks through Cadmium, SfN’s virtual event vendor. If you have difficulty accessing Cadmium, please email program@sfn.org.

On February 7th, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that effective immediately, all NIH grants must have a maximum indirect cost rate of 15% in lieu of the normal rates defined in an institution’s negotiated indirect cost rate agreement. This policy change will have massive consequences for potentially life-saving brain and behavior research that benefits millions of Americans.

WASHINGTON — The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has selected 10 members from a highly competitive applicant pool to participate in the Society’s annual Capitol Hill Day on March 11–13, 2025.

Autonomic reflexes are not as easy for the public to understand as, for example, the knee jerk. However, diseases associated with autonomic dysfunction have profound impact on the quality of life. We have developed an exhibit for educational purposes that links cardiovascular autonomic regulation with postural challenges experienced everyday and the function of the baroreceptor reflex. Although most people can feel light-headed after standing rapidly from a reclining position, they are not aware that the brain compensates for these changes in position through the baroreceptor reflex. Our exhibit incorporates several key techniques to attract an audience and give them a hands-on experience. First, the audience becomes the subject. Changes in body position (head up to head down) were accomplished by locking the subject’s ankles in a commercially available tilt table (Hang Ups, Teeters). Subjects were moved from head up to horizontal to head down positions. Second, the subjects could hear the changes in their...

Animal studies and human tissue experiments have demonstrated that traumatic brain injury (TBI) causes damage in the extracellular matrix (ECM). To test the hypothesis that TBI causes disruption of sulfated glycosaminoglycan (sGAG) in the ECM, we measured levels of sGAG in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), blood, and urine, in patients with severe TBI in the acute post-injury period. Samples of CSF, blood, and urine were obtained within 72 hours of injury in patients who received external ventricular drains as part of their treatment of severe TBI. Levels of chondroitin and heparan sGAGs were measured, along with their disaccharide constituents. Demographic information, presence of polytrauma, brain injury load, and distance of radiologically visible parenchymal injury from the ventricle were analyzed for correlation with total subtype sGAG levels. Levels were measured in 14 patients ranging in age from 17-90 years. CSF sGAG levels were variable among patients, with higher sGAG levels in plasma compared to CS...

Cornelia “Cori” Bargmann, PhD, of The Rockefeller University, and Gerald “Gerry” Rubin, PhD, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, have been awarded the 2024 Gruber Neuroscience Prize. The award recognizes their pioneering work in elucidating the organization of circuits in behavior, and for their work in developing new genetics tools, which have advanced the entire field of neuroscience.

Thank you for attending Neuroscience 2019!

Download a transcript of the sample virtual poster presentation.