Get Your Next Story Idea at Neuroscience 2017
WASHINGTON, DC — Connect with neuroscience experts and learn about the latest research on topics such as the effects of opioids and stress on the brain, the consequences of athletic concussions, and how bacteria in the gut influences diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Register for Neuroscience 2017, Nov. 11-15 in Washington, DC, to attend in-person or to report remotely by watching live-streamed press conferences and accessing our online press room of embargoed content.
Register for Neuroscience 2017: https://xpressreg.net/register/sfnx1117/media/start.asp
This year’s meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) will bring together nearly 30,000 attendees and feature 14,000 scientific presentations exploring the newest neuroscience research, methods, and technologies. Credentialed media receive complimentary registration and access to top neuroscientists, embargoed press materials, and special events, providing a rich collection of news and feature possibilities.
10 Live-Streamed Press Conferences
Exploring Sleep’s Role in Learning and Memory
As we struggle to manage our busy lives, often many of us sacrifice sleep. In fact, one in three Americans does not sleep the recommended seven to nine hours per night. Sleep is intimately connected to our brain’s ability to store memories, so how does our sleep — or the lack thereof — affect this process? Scientists will discuss the effects of sleep on regulation of gene expression, waste accumulation in our brain cells, and our ability to process and prioritize memories. In addition, researchers have discovered three closely related spider species with extraordinarily fast-running biological clocks.
New Techniques to Study Brain Disorders Lay Groundwork for Future Discovery
To uncover treatments for brain disorders such as autism, epilepsy, addiction, and schizophrenia, we must first understand how these disorders manifest. Scientists will present novel techniques for identifying and studying the genes and cellular mechanisms underlying these disorders, providing information that may be applied to developing targeted and more effective therapies.
How Military Service Changes the Brain
The cognitive and emotional effects of military service are far-reaching and can drastically affect service members’ lives. Researchers will discuss the long-term functional and behavioral effects of repeated blast brain injuries, potential stem cell treatment for penetrating ballistic brain injuries, and the multi-symptom nature of Gulf War Illness. In addition, will describe an objective biomarker of pilot expertise that could be used in a flight simulator to train novice pilots.
From Epigenetics to Neurogenesis: How the Brain Reacts to Stress
Stress is pervasive in our lives — from the little day-to-day stressors we all face to the traumatic events that some children, soldiers, and others experience. New results will show the epigenetic changes caused by paternal stress and childhood trauma, as well as potential paths for mitigating the damage that stress causes to our brains, including through our immune system and neurogenesis.
The Social Brain: From Aggression to Cooperation
Humans are social beings, influencing and influenced by the people around us. Recognizing this fundamental element of human nature, scientists are using animal models, and specifically nonhuman primates, to study how the brain is wired for social interactions. Research presented will shed light on the brain areas and circuits involved in social decision-making, aggression, and cooperation.
Stemming Pain and Addiction, Understanding Opioid Abuse
As the world’s opioid crisis worsens, research to decipher how opioids affect the brain becomes increasingly imperative. New results will show the potential effects of neonatal opioid exposure and withdrawal, how diet may influence opioid dependence, the possibly causal relationship between opioids and post-traumatic stress disorder, and a procedure for minimizing relapse in heroin addiction.
The Gut Microbiome’s Role in Neurodegeneration
Humans have roughly as many bacterial cells in their bodies as human cells, and most of those bacteria live in the gut. Recent research shows that the microorganisms living in our gut influence the health of our brain. This bidirectional gut-brain relationship holds great promise for potentially diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as well as for slowing progression of such diseases with probiotics and compounds derived from gut bacteria.
The Hard-Hitting Consequences of Athletic Head Injuries
Playing and celebrating sports is a social focal point in many cultures. Many athletes, however, sustain concussions and often return to play before their brains are fully healed. Soccer fans will be interested to learn that women may be more sensitive to the effects of heading the ball than men, while fans of American football will discover that National Football League policy may precipitate unnecessarily high rates of concussion. In addition, researchers will discuss the effects of “subconcussive” head injuries from contact sports as well as the deviation between incidence of concussion and reports of concussion among military academy students, who are required to participate in sports.
Brain Stimulation: Improved Methods and Promising Results
Electrical stimulation of specific brain regions holds immense promise for improving memory and treating chronic pain, depression, and movement disorders such as dyskinesia, a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. Scientists will present encouraging results from brain stimulation studies in humans and nonhuman primates as well as improved methods for transcranial focused ultrasound and deep brain stimulation, and a new technique for monitoring and adjusting how much stimulation is applied to the brain.
Advances in Neuroprosthetics and Robotics Enrich Lives
Neuroscientists are harnessing incredible developments in implantable neural recording devices, tissue engineering, and developmental biology to create more and more advanced prosthetics, brain-machine interfaces, and soft “biological robots,” with the goal of improving quality of life for people with sensory impairment. Researchers will describe new neurotechnologies that increase tactile feedback and reduce phantom pain, as well as explain how development of biocompatible retinal implants and bioengineered robots may be the first step toward building a repertoire of more organic and complex capabilities.
Media are required to register for credentials. Visit www.sfn.org/media2017 for more information.
The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 37,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and nervous system.
