At the Society for Neuroscience Conference

This week I attended the conference of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington. This is a huge conference, probably the largest neuro- related conference in the world, with around 30,000 attendees every year. The society itself has a membership of about 40,000. Such a large conference and professional organization shows the importance of studies of the brain in modern science. Although it is notable that of the approximately 40,000 members only two are based in Ecuador. We were both there this week.

Many psychologists from around the world were presenting at the conference. Neuroscience and psychological science are two sides of the same coin. You can't really understand the brain without understanding psychology, and vice versa. That's why I was there, not presenting, just for professional development. As a researcher I need to learn of the latest advances as well as widen my understanding in general. As a teacher of psychology, I also need to be constantly updating my knowledge. Ecuador unfortunately has few opportunities for professional development locally, and so it is necessary to attend international events such as this conference in the USA. Keeping up to date with research is particularly important in psychology related to the brain, as it is such a fast-moving field.

The knowledge base of neuropsychology for example has advanced considerably since I was a student in the 90's. I had two very good neuropsychologist teachers, Glyn Humphreys and Jane Riddoch, and I learnt a lot of the latest understanding of the brain from them. But so much has happened since then, the old information is not wrong, but there is so much more detail now. For example, the function of the orbitofrontal cortex has long-been poorly understood. One feature of damage to it, as I learnt as a student, is utilization behavior, the tendency of patients to use objects that are presented to them, even if that use is inappropriate.

This week I watched a presentation by Timothy Behrens (of UCL and Oxford University in the UK) on coding of problem spaces in the orbitofrontal cortex. With magnetoencephalography he has been able to record the different activations in the brain used to solve problems at different stages. And incredibly, they were able to show that when people later rest, their brains run through the same sequence of activations, forward and backwards, over a period of only about 50 milliseconds. This replay phenomenon is likely part of the learning consolidation process. The research is described here just as an example of how rapidly we are increasing our understanding of the psychological processes within the brain.

 

The main lecture hall. Multiple large screens so that thousands of people can see the speaker.

This is the plus side of attending a conference such as Society for Neuroscience. On the other hand, such huge conferences can be overwhelming. With so many presentations it is difficult to choose who to listen to, and as one attendee among 30,000 in a huge conference center there is inevitably a lot of queuing and walking between distant rooms.

For my next conference, I'm planning something smaller and low-key. Jamaica in November 2018 for the Caribbean Psychology Conference.