Scientists talk about what they do and why they do what they do. Their motivations, their trajectory, their setbacks, their achievements. They offer their personal take on science, mentoring and the many aspects that have shaped their work and their lives. Hosted by journalist Vivien Marx. Her work has appeared in Nature journals, Science, The Economist, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe and New Scientist among others. (Art: Justin Jackson)
Transcript
Sneak-peek of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting 2024
Marina Picciotto
In many of the small meetings that I go to, it is one topic, one type of technique, one level of investigation. And that's one of the real advantages of getting all of these 20,000 people together in one place, is that these teams need very different expertise, very different levels of progression to translation, or whatever next steps are, and certainly my lab and others come to this meeting in order to meet their colleagues who are in these teams or form new teams.
Vivien
That was Yale University researcher Dr. Marina Picciotto, who is also the president of the Society for Neuroscience. SFN. Hi and welcome to Conversations with scientists. I'm science journalist Vivien Marx, you will hear more from Dr Piciotto shortly, and also from Dr Damien Fair from the University of Minnesota. He is the chair of the Public Education and Communication committee of the Society for Neuroscience. You will also hear from Society for Neuroscience Chief of Staff, Melissa Thompson, who is also Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Communication. This is an open mic situation, so some questions will come from my co- moderator and I, as well as manuscript editors from Nature journals and an editor and journalist from Scientific American. We would like to share with you some recent trends in the science of studying the brain, also trends in mental health, weight loss drugs, psychedelics, neuroscience and art and plenty more about the brain. This is a sneak peek of the tiny Society for Neuroscience annual meeting coming up in Chicago. I say tiny, but of course, that's just me being a little silly, since around 20,000 people attend this meeting, if you're interested in any of this, great, because those are some of the things you'll hear about in this podcast. When the podcast recording started, my microphone cable flaked out for a moment. Oh, awful and embarrassing when that happens. Fortunately, the podcast guests kindly took over for that moment. I am very grateful to them for that.
Elisa Floridiaa
Okay, that's a problem, if the host doesn't have a mic.
Marina Picciotto
Unplug it, replug it. That's usually what I do, shake it, turn it upside down. Vivien will be using interpretive dance only.
Vivien M
I would like that. Can you hear me now, ok.
Everyone
Yes.
Vivien M [2:50]
Okay. Sorry about that.
Marina Picciotto
No interpretive dance. I'm sad.
Vivien
I can do it. I can, it will be wild. People won't be amused. Thank you so much everyone for joining. This is a really great opportunity for us to hear what you're up to, what this teeny tiny meeting is going to be about.
Marina Picciotto
Itty bitty.
Vivien [3:10]
So let me make sure everyone's online, and I know it's a night time in Europe. It's also a somber day in New York City because it's September 11, but we're very happy to have you and to be able to give this sneak-peek of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. And it's an open mic situation too. Whatever you want to ask, I'm sure that Dr Fair and Dr Picciotto will be able to answer that. So just to introduce them, Yale University researcher Dr. Picciotto is the President of the Society for Neuroscience, and then we have Dr Fair. He's at the University of Minnesota. He is the chair of the Public Education and Communication committee. Manuscript editors and chief editors are on this call. So that's awesome. So I was going to start by introducing my co host, John.
John Bakogiannis [3:55]
Hi everyone. I'm John Bakoyannis from nature mental health, and I'm mostly handling biological psychiatry and cognition papers. I'm very excited to be here today or tonight, and thanks for the invitation, Vivien. I'm very excited to do this with you.
Vivien
So a package of factual questions to get those out of the way. How many attendees are you expecting for this teeny, tiny meeting that's about to start in Chicago? How many posters, approximately, and will things be live-streamed or post-streamed, or whatever the right word is for that, just so for people who can't make it or who miss something, can they listen afterwards? I'm just going to add here next you'll hear comments from Melissa Thompson from the Society for Neuroscience.
Melissa Thompson [4:35]
We are expecting upwards of 20,000 attendees, and we have more than 11,000 presentations between posters and all the planned lectures, and so on and so forth. And then there's more than 450 exhibiting companies that will be present there as well. And as far as live streaming goes, the press conferences are all live streamed as they are traditionally. So those can all be watched remotely, and we also livestream our featured lectures. So we have the virtual platform that we've had since 2021, we've always had the featured lectures as part of that, and that will continue this year. And then there will be some virtual posters on there as well, if people choose to upload a Virtual Poster, if they're an in-person attendee, or there's some registrants who are virtual only, although the bulk of people will be there in person,
Vivien
Of course. Wow. That's quite a presentation. Wow. So we're not going to torture you. Dr. Fair, Dr. Picciotto for giving us a summary of everything there's going to be, but I thought we would ask you what you're most excited about. There's a lot to take in, but I know that there are Presidential Lectures, there's Special Lectures, and so I'm just going to open it up to you so that you can explain what is a highlight, you know, for you among the many that you probably have.
Marina Picciotto [6:00]
Maybe I'll start, Damian, and then hand it over to you. That sounds great. Yeah, great. Well, one of the real perks of being President of SfN, of course, is to listen to the great science, but is to choose the Presidential Lecturers. And I wanted to highlight the idea that first of all, very basic research in neuroscience is essential for increasing our knowledge of the brain and the brain- body interface and behavior, but it's also key to later translational efforts, and that we don't know until maybe years passed, whether very fundamental research is going to result in our cures or not. So we want to highlight both the very fundamental science as well as some of the efforts that have been made to take some of that science into the translational realm.
And I wanted to highlight those in the Presidential Lectures by taking four areas that I'm particularly interested in, and the first is large language models and AI and what that reflects on what we understand about how the brain works and how language works. So Lori Paul will be our first lecturer. She's in the theme of cognition, and she's going to be talking particularly about: what does a large language model know? When are these large language models going to become self aware? And we'll find out what they have to think about that.
The other thing I wanted to highlight is how team science, big science, is changing how we work as neuroscientists. And, of course, we all know that one of the transformative efforts have been through the Allen Institute. And so our second Presidential Lecturer is the incoming, or I guess, current, scientific director of the Allen Brain Institute, and that's Rui Costa. And he's going to talk about the foundational efforts to map different cell types and circuits in the mammalian brain. And I would venture to say that any of our attendees who are using mammalian systems, whether they're mice or their non-human primates, are beginning to go, or have already been going for a long time, to the Allen Brain Atlases, first for molecular information, now on connectivity information. And just as the human genome project changed what we did as a scientific community, I think these kinds of large projects to catalog fundamental aspects of neuroscience have been really transformative to what each of us can do.
The third lecture is by Nancy Ip, who is, I believe, now, the Chancellor of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. And I wanted to show with her work how very basic cellular neurobiology can be, translationally relevant. And Nancy's work has been on intracellular signaling, biochemical pathways for a very long time now, and she is fundamentally interested in how we can use that information to understand neurodegenerative disease and how those neurobiological aspects of cell biology are translatable.
And finally, I wanted to talk about tools, and I wanted to get someone who is an engineer, who's working in the neuroscience space, who could tell us about that interface between engineering and neuroscience. It's a historically very important part of neuroscience. Physics, engineering and so on, have always been tightly linked to neuroscience and neurobiology. And so our fourth speaker is Marquita Landry, who's going to be talking about these new imaging tools that will allow imaging of brain chemistry at spatial and temporal scales used by neurons to establish neuronal communication in the brain. So I could probably keep going and going, but I'm going to stop there, because I think that highlights the idea of the breadth of what we're trying to represent, the diversity of topics, and what, fundamentally, it means to get 20,000 neuroscientists together in the same place.
Damien Fair [10:15]
You're getting me very excited. Oh, that's fantastic. I am very excited for the meeting this year, both for the Presidential Lectures, the Special Lectures, one of the benefits of being the chair of the of the press, of the PEC Committee, is that all of the abstracts for the entire meeting, we get to go over as a group. Now, that may sound very painful, and it's hard, you know, but at the same time, you get to see the breadth and the type of work that's going on around the entire around the world in the neuroscience domain.
And from that effort, we put together several press conferences that I'm hoping to get you all to come to and check out that should be very exciting, some pretty hot topics this year. Everything from adolescent brain and the effects of substance abuse on early adolescent brain development is very big. That is actually being moderated by Bea Luna, who's also giving a special lecture on linking molecular mechanisms to global systems-level activities and brain trajectories in youth, which will be very exciting.
Damien Fair
One in eight folks now are on Ozempic or some other GLP-1 agonist now, right?
Marina Picciotto
Did you say one in eight?
Damien Fair
One in eight. You know, it's fascinating. So, of course, these receptors are scattered throughout the entire brain. There's an entire press conference just trying to understand, or beginning to understand the other aspects of these that go beyond just diabetes and weight loss. So that should be pretty that should be a lot of fun, of course, the immune system and other systemic systems and how they relate to brain development. There's a whole press conference on that that will be starting from very early pre pregnancy development and how that affects long term trajectories to other aspects of how the immune system interacts in the brain, that one should be that one another press conference that's really exciting for me. Chronic pain is one of the most debilitating disorders that exist in our society, and there has been a ton of work, both in building new types of models from stem cells to study chronic pain, but also new ways of thinking and understanding the basic neuroscience that can lead to new types of treatments in a translational way, just like Marina was describing. This should be a lot of fun. There's another press conference on healthy brain aging. It's beginning, essentially, kind of shifting the way that we think about aging from just a period of pure cognitive decline, you know, to actually what it likely is, is a different way of like going about your everyday lives and not just purely about, you know, decline. And so that's to be that press conference. So anyway, this year is packed with great topics for the press conference. And I hope that, hope to see folks there
Marina Picciotto [13:15]
I'm going to that last one for sure.
Damien Fair
I'm also there's several special lectures. I There's one by Corey Harwell, which is a little bit dear to my heart, you know, because it just goes to the breadth and the diversity, a little bit of the of the society and how it's come over the many years. Corey and I started as young graduate students, so when we, when we were at SfN, you know, more than, over 20 years ago when we first met, you're both these UNCF Merck Black Scholars, and we sat at a small little table with all we tried to get all the Black scientists together, you know, at the small little table at SfN. And now, when we go to these meetings, you know, there's just this plethora of diversity that's beginning to mature and grow with Black in Neuro and these other big units. And seeing Corey, now myself and Corey are giving special lectures this year, and seeing him on the docket was just like a just like a nice vision of where we've come as a society with regard to maximizing the input from all of our scientists. So I'm excited about that as well.
Vivien [14:25]
Awesome. We have about 100 questions. I think perhaps to ask, as people think about their questions, we're going to put something in that's just a way to get a lot of information in a very short amount of time. It's a word game that started with French novelist Marcel Proust, who developed this questionnaire, and then Bernard Pivot used it in his television show that was on for decades. Inside the Actors studio. And then Inside the Actor's Studio used it, and Stephen Colbert uses it. We're going to do a version of this. John, are you ready? Awesome. So it's a word pair, and you pick one word that resonates more with you, and then we'll move on to the next word. So either Marina or Damien can go first. And for example, I'll just do the first one, just to so
If you can ride a bicycle and you do, do you wear a helmet? Yes or no?
Marina Picciotti
absolutely. I'm a neuroscientist.
Damien Fair
Yes.
Vivien
John, your turn
John
Big conferences or small conferences?
Marina Picciotto
Big.
Damien Fair
Big.
Marina Picciotto
Many scientists in one place.
Vivien
awesome, big tent. Like that. Poster or talk?
Marina Picciotto
Poster.
Damien Fair
Posters
Marina
Yes posters.
Vivien
John:
John
Human or mouse?
Damien Fair
You're gonna get different answers from us.
Marina Picciotto
Mouse,
Damien Fair
Human.
Vivien
That's fine. We like diversity, right? Diversity is good,
Marina Picciotto
And not just humans, not just mice, but model organisms. Our special lectures, our posters are on flies, worms, mice, rats, humans, non-human primates, all of the above.
John
We had to simplify it two options.
Vivien
it's unfair. The two options we understand, yes, uh, science is complex. Maybe. Okay, a few more, and then we'll go to the questions and all that: fMRI, or microscopy.
Marina Picciotto
Microscopy
Damien Fair
fMRI.
Vivien
I figured that
Marina Picciotto
Again at a meeting like SFN, where we bring everybody together in a big tent. Yes,we want to represent.
Damien Fair
This is a great pair, because it's, it goes to show. It gives you great examples of, like, the breadth of the work that's happening at the society.
John
I have a tricky one, people with autism or autistic people?
Vivien
Yes, of course. All right, John, your next. And maybe we'll, we'll turn to questions, if people have any.
Marina Picciotto
People with autism for me. But I think it depends on how people want to self define. I will respect whatever choice they make.
Damien Fair
Yeah, it's a spectrum. It's a tough one. It's like almost neither. It's like autistic traits, you know, maybe.
Marina
It's a good question, though, and again, it, I think it should be self defined,
Vivien M
Fabulous. Thank you for playing along
Vivien
After this little word game that has some tradition, Dr Picciotto and Dr Fair spoke a bit more about what's in store at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
Marina Picciotto [18:00]
You probably all know that we, every year have a Dialogs between Neuroscience and Society lecture. It kicks off the meeting, and in general, it's ranged across topics. You know, we've had magicians, we've had the Dalai Lama famously, but we've also had artists, we've had politicians, we've had advocates. And this year, I really wanted to highlight art and the brain, and so I've invited Susan Magsamen, who is really at that intersection between neuroscience and art. She is the director of the International Arts + Mind lab at the Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins, and she is also a co-author of a book called 'Your Brain on Art’, and has really devoted her life and career to bringing together artists and scientists. And now she's going to talk about this new area of science, neuroaesthetics, where really very basic neuroscientists can get involved in the artistic process and what it means for the brain. So that's going to kick us off.
Marina And there'll be, I think, an opportunity for the audience to talk about what comes up for them, either on the art side or the science side, or hopefully at that intersection.
Vivien
Sounds really great. John, do you have any questions before I go to my pile of questions, and I know
John [19:15]
I have plenty of questions, but just to, just because Dr Picciotto talked about it before. I was wondering, because translational neuroscience is a very important aspect of neuroscience, aside from fundamental science. And at the same time, clinical research in the field of neuroscience and mental health, that I'm mostly affiliated, with is also important. And both of them work together, and we highlight that in our recent issue that was out a few days ago in in Nature Mental Health. So I was wondering, how do you see the this kind of hybrid research, either as a single projects or multiple projects, and then how this kind of hybrid models are reflected in SfN this year? I
Marina Picciotto
I think that's a great question, because certainly when students come to SfN, they're often looking for the translational relevance of the work that's presented, and to link their own work to translational problems. As I think I sort of talked about when we first were discussing the Presidential lecturers, we have tried to highlight how very basic cellular biology, for example, can be very translational: taking the molecules and the mutations that have been identified in patients, taking them back to cells, so that you can connect those mutations to synaptic properties to signaling and so on. But we do have also Special Lectures, for example, around disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer's disease. Takeshi Iwaubo from the University of Tokyo, is one of our special lecturers who's taking the fundamental neuroimaging data and using that to understand how disease-modifying therapies targeting amyloid, for example, might be changing the brain. But this is not a clinical conference, right? We're not there to provide new therapies. We're not there for clinicians to find new modalities for for treatment. What we are there to highlight is how very fundamental neuroscience does contribute to the clinical enterprise. And Damien, you may have more to say.
Damien Fair [21:35]
Yeah, I'll only add a little bit that's absolutely right. And it's the other aspect that I think the new age where we are at, or the science is that, is that teams are working much more closely together now than they ever had before, in part because the technology is almost demanding it. You know, it's like a lot of work doesn't just happen in small labs anymore, because you just don't have the expertise to carry out everything. So that means that the work is being spread with big collaborative teams across different units. That's being highlighted in the Presidential Lectures. Then you'll see it rampant throughout the entire
Marina Picciotto
And Dr. Fair's lecture, which will also
Vivien
Hint, hint but there is one, right, I think I saw, I saw you're on the schedule. And you'll mention, I guess, team science sounds like
Damien Fair
So what that ends up being is that the you start seeing, really, that the translation of this very basic science from individual labs kind of making it to the-- I call it the baton handoff--making it to these next phases, because that kind of work and collaborative work, those bridges are being built more and more and more. So you'll see a lot of that throughout the entire conference, even though, you know, there's some basic fundamental units and principles that are driving a lot of that type of translational work.
Marina Picciotto [23:00]
Sorry, let me just add one thing, which is that in many of the small meetings that I go to, it is one topic, one type of technique, one level of investigation. And that's one of the real advantages of getting all of these 20,000 people together in one place, is that these teams need very different expertise, very different levels of progression to translation, or whatever next steps are. And certainly my lab and others come to this meeting in order to meet their colleagues who are in these teams, or form new teams.
Vivien
I meant to ask you before I ask the other question, what is behind you? What is that image that you have? What are these?
Marina Picciotto
That is staining of Drosophila neurons across the body axis. Who are which are obviously very beautiful, but also demonstrate the symmetry across segments of the Drosophila larva.
Vivien
Oh, super cool.
John
Very interesting.
Vivien
So to treatment and clinical and basic research, just a question. So treatment resistant is one of those words that comes up in a lot of contexts and relates to, for example, depression, frustrating, and also, of course, the outcome can be suicide. How do you deal with the fact that it's just a very, very hard slog to develop, I guess, treatments for mental health, neuropsychiatry, I'll leave it up to you to talk about the disorder and condition that you'd like to speak to.
Damien Fair [23:35]
Yes. Well, I, you know, this one is dear to my heart in that certainly over the past, you know, 30 or so years, it's been difficult and the mental health disorders in psychiatry to develop, the types of medicinal therapies to treatment and disorders. But I would say, you know, in the 90s, I think we called it the Decade of the Brain, but I think we're about to be on the verge of the real decade of the brain, in part because there's been three elements that have finally come together to change the way that we can now manipulate brain systems in humans. One is that we finally, after decades of like messing around with non- invasive brain imaging, including fMRI, have finally figured out how to do this really, really, really, really well so we can map people's brains very specifically. In fact, I'll talk about this in my lecture, this exact thing. So we can map people's brains, almost like a fingerprint. Number two is the engineering has just skyrocketed, with the ability to non-invasive and invasive ways to modulate the brain. Number three, our computing has become huge. So we now we have the computational power to do things that we never had before, bringing all those things together. And now you'll start to see a pop, now we can go specifically mapping new types of circuits, developing new types of systems and be able to modulate the brain without drugs to help treat. And that is a game changer. And we're kind of, we're kind of there. And so that will be, there'll be you'll see a lot of that at the meeting this year,
Marina Picciotto [26:05]
And you'll hear a lot of that from Dr Fair's lecture specifically. But just to expand that beyond the psychiatry realm to the neurology realm, I'd also like to highlight the clinical neuroscience lecture by Jocelyn Block from Lausanne University, who's going to be talking about implanted systems to regulate autonomic and motor function. And this is really, again, a game changer, where we didn't have any way to help people, for example, with impaired neurological function. And now with this kind of interface between engineering and biology, which is really at the heart of many of the technologies that have been developed, not only for humans, but also that we can use in animals for proof of concept. This has begun to be translated to patients. We know a lot about this, obviously, for Parkinson's disease, which is almost the pioneer in terms of brain stimulation. And this is now translated to other neurological disorders, and is, as you probably know well, is beginning to be used in clinical trials for psychiatric disorders as well, including treatment resistant depression.
John [27:15]
Yes, I had a question regarding that because, not only because of treatment-resistant depression, but also because you referred drugs as treatments, different types of substances that can be used. And I was wondering if you have any comment regarding the recent decision of FDA to decline to approve MDMA as potential treatment for PTSD, for post-traumatic stress disorder, mostly because this psychedelic research has increased the recent during the recent years, and I was wondering if, if you think this may have an impact in the neuroscience research in the US or even the rest of the globe.
Marina Picciotto
I would say that certainly at the abstract level, we have many, many abstracts on psychedelics and other sorts of what are they called, intactogens, I've forgotten the terminology.
Vivien
Wow is that the word, interesting.
Marina Picciotto [28:00]
I believe so. There's clearly still fundamental interest in in doing that research. There'll be posters on this topic. And certainly people who are interested in doing this kind of research are coming together in the neuroscience world. So it will still be, I don't think that the FDA decision is changing the excitement among those who are coming to the meeting.
Damien Fair
Yeah, that's exactly right. And in fact, there's a there's the excitement on use on psychedelics is just it's actually probably grown over the last year. There's a recent paper that just came out in the last few weeks that you probably seen splattered across the New York Times about psychedelics and the brain, and how it changes levels of plasticity. So there's just, you can just see the there's just a lot of excitement on the on trying to understand both regular psychedelics, non-hallucinogenic psychedelics all the way down from stem cells, human research. I mean, it's just, it's growing.
Marina
And you'll see those on the poster floor. Yeah,
John
That's great to hear.
Vivien
Good to hear, yes, and not, not fringe, obviously, but sounds like it's quite, quite numerous in its presence.
Gary Stix [29:20]
Yeah, I, I'd actually. So is there anything
Vivien
I'll just identify you, because maybe,
Marina Picciotto
Yeah, I mean, I think that the bottom line is that we have a number of sessions that are relevant to intracellular signaling that go across, let's say, meningioma, neuroblastoma and so on. But there's no, I can't point you to a special lecture, but if you look through the posters, you will find that there's interest in this. We did have Michelle Monje speak at past meetings. She's obviously someone who is quite prominent in the field. I'm pretty sure she's going to be at the meeting. But at the poster level, there is certainly interest in this area. That intersection in signaling between neuroscience and cancer is pretty fundamental. I mean, I think a number of our trainees certainly are very interested in that area.
Gary Stix
Yeah, I'm with Scientific American. Sorry. Is there anything that you're excited about in the cancer neuroscience area? There's a lot of research that is looking at the interaction of the nervous system with cancers and, you know, promoting growth, oncogenesis and such. So I'm just wondering.
Also, is there any way that basic neuroscience can foster translation for psychedelics, because I remember sitting in one of these news sessions 10 years ago, and there was tremendous excitement about ketamine. And ketamine actually has some interesting uses, but it actually has not turned out to be what some people expected. You know, a complete new approach to antidepressant.
Marina Picciotto
I think it is isn't completely new, that is, there hasn't
Gary Stix
I think it hasn't had the impact that some people expected it to have.
Marina Picciotto
I think those are questions beyond the meeting. I do think that the basic neuroscience of both ketamine, which will be represented at the meeting, as well as these psychedelics, is of use to the field in terms of finding out where the where the overlaps are, where the similar mechanisms are, certainly one of the fundamental things, and I know that there are posters on this are around formation of new connections between neurons, and particularly at the spine level. Spine dynamics have been studied for ketamine for many years, and are now increasingly being studied following treatment with these psychedelics and other intactogens. So I do think that there is a role for fundamental neuroscience in understanding these processes, I think you'll find, again, I think you'll find abstracts on that.
Vivien
And I will just add here, those were questions from Gary Stix at Scientific American. Next is Elisa Floridiaa, senior editor at Nature Neuroscience. Thanks so much. Elisa, you're next.
Elisa Floridiaa [32:25]
Yes, I'll try to be brief. So I mean, this sounds like a super exciting meeting. I've been in neuroscience long enough to be pleased, but not surprised. But so we've touched upon a number of super-interesting topics. You know, from cancer neuroscience, psychedelics, mood disorders and so forth, you know, brain atlases and so forth and so on. So the concept of neuroscience continues to evolve and change. So what are Marina and Damian's definition of neuroscience in 2024?
Marina Picciotto
Damian, do you want to start?
Damien Fair [33:10]
That's a big one. Well, you know, I look, I believe that neuroscience is really at the center of most everything. You know, it's hard to recognize that in your everyday lives, but everything that we do revolves around our brains and how our brain works. So neuroscience is really, it's really a hub for all things. It's in your phones, it's in your refrigerators, it's in your cars. You know, all of AI is built based on the fundamental principles that neuroscience comes up with, or how our brains develop. So I want to say that, you know, of course, I'm biased, but I want to say like, neuroscience is really all things. It's more than just understanding how the brain works, and the basic biology and fundamental principles of how it's organized, but it really is impactful to all things that in our everyday lives and everything that we really touch so and, you know, so that's, that's what I believe
Marina Picciotto [34:25]
I'll add to that, and that is that we're often very brain-centric, and neuroscience is much more than the brain. And the idea that brain-body interaction is also at the heart of what it means to be an organism. Still, it keeps the brain in mind, but the interactions between the brain and the immune system, for example, like Isa Rolls, who's going to be giving a special lecture, is fascinating. The fact that your brain can expect a pathogen and change the immune system before the pathogen is on board, it's amazing. But even going beyond that, there are nerve cells that aren't in the brain that are essential for our survival and for the evolution of all organisms that have some kind of central control of their behavior. And if we understand how nerve cells work, we understand cellular communication, we understand intercellular signaling, we understand how cells adapt to the environment, organisms adapt to the environment. There's so much it's such a diverse field. And one of the things I think that's attracted me to neuroscience is its inclusion, right? In our programs. For example, you self-identify as a neuroscientist, you're a neuroscientist. You may work on a molecule that happens to have relevance for how nerve cells communicate. You're a neuroscientist. You may work on human behavior and human psychophysics and you're interested in how that reflects on what neurobiological processes might be doing. You want to be a neuroscientist? You're a neuroscientist. It is a very big tent.
Vivien
Neuroscience,and the big tent. That was today's episode of Conversations with Scientists. Thank you everyone, and see you at SFN. Thank you
Vivien
Thank you.
Everyone
Thank you
Vivien
Cheers. Bye. Today's guests were Yale University researcher Dr Marina Picciotto and President of the Society for Neuroscience SfN, Dr Damien Fair from the University of Minnesota, who is chair of the Public Education and Communication Committee of the Society for Neuroscience. Melissa Thompson, the Society for Neuroscience, chief of staff and senior director of digital strategy and communication. You also heard from Dr Elisa Floridiaa, senior editor at Nature Neuroscience and Gary Stix from Scientific American and I wanted to say thank you very much to the Society for Neuroscience communications team who helped make this conversation happen.
Thank you very much to my co host, Dr John Bakogiannis, associate editor at Nature Mental Health. The music in this podcast is Base that thing up by Luke Allieres, licensed from artlist.io and I just wanted to say because there's confusion about these things, sometimes nobody paid to be in this podcast, nobody external paid for this podcast. This is independent journalism that I produce. I'm Vivien Marx, thanks for listening.