By Oriol Pavón, Wellcome Trust PhD student in Neuroscience

On Friday 22nd of June, just under 800 researchers gathered at the UCL Institute of Education to celebrate the 9th UCL Neuroscience Symposium. With two fantastic keynote speakers, six talks by UCL group leaders, and 129 posters spread across three sessions, the event was once again a big success that marked the culmination of another impressive year for the UCL Neuroscience Domain.

 The morning began with Dr Caswell Barry welcoming everyone and giving a brief overview of the day before proceeding to introduce the first speaker of the meeting: Prof Daniel Wolpert from Columbia University, who presented his work on “Probabilistic Models of Sensorimotor Control”. Prof Wolpert shared how his lab uses machine learning and Bayes theory to investigate human movement control, how we learn to manipulate tools, and what cognitive processes underlie decision making and having a change of mind. After the engaging Q&A session came to an end, Prof Michael Häusser introduced the winners of the Jon Driver Prize, awarded to outstanding young neuroscientists from UCL for their work during their PhD. This year’s awardees were Andrea Banino, for his work on “Neuroscience and AI: modelling the brain using deep neural networks”, and Ruben Duque do Vale, for his research on “Spatial navigation during escape behaviours in mice”, who both had the chance to present their work to the audience. (more…)

By Oriol Pavón, Wellcome Trust PhD student in Neuroscience

Now in its 8^th year, the UCL Neuroscience Symposium is the perfect occasion to catch up with the latest developments of our colleagues and establish new collaborations. Over 800 researchers and a gender-balanced line up of speakers gathered to share and discuss some of the exciting scientific breakthroughs that UCL has seen over the past year.

The event kicked off with an unplanned outdoor networking session caused by a fire alarm, thankfully false. Professor Richard Morris of the University of Edinburgh, who shared the 2016 Brain Prize, then delivered a fantastic talk on ‘The synaptic plasticity and memory hypothesis’.

Professor Ray Dolan, awardee of the 2017 Brain Prize, introduced the winners of the Jon Driver Prize. Established to honour the memory of the late Professor Jon Driver, former director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, this year’s prize was awarded to three outstanding young neuroscientists from UCL who took the stage to briefly present their work.

Next a poster session, with over 150 lab and research posters showcased in three different halls, allowed PhD students, post-docs and group leaders to present and discuss their research in an amiable atmosphere.

Professor Kenneth Harris chaired the first session of UCL speakers. Dr Jennifer Bizley delivered a talk on “How does seeing improve listening?”, showing how visual cues can be decisive to discriminate between different overlapping sounds. (more…)