Neuroscience Forum

A colleague of mine recently sent around an article he read. I personally find it quite an interesting read about how stupidity might actually be an important concept in science. Here is the link. Its free access so take a read if you have some free time

Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday.  He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as "the amnesic patient, H.M."  He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School.  In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation at the Hartford Hospital to relieve his seizure disorder. Immediately after the operation, Mr. Molaison showed a profound amnesia, which became the topic of intense scientific study for more than five decades.  From age 27 on, he was unable to establish new memories for events in his everyday life and to acquire general information about the world in which he lived.  His memory impairment was "pure" and not accompanied by intellectual or personality disorders.  For this reason, and because the operation has not been repeated, he is the most widely studied and famous case in the neuroscience literature of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Mr. Molaison's contributions to knowledge about memory have been groundbreaking, and researchers worldwide are in his debt.

The Berlin Brain Days 2008 is jointly organized by the seven Phd-programs in Berlin to foster exchange and interaction between neuroscience faculty and students across Berlin. On this symposium PhD students will present their research in lectures and poster presentations. Prof. Dr. Helmut Kettenmann – Chair

This year's invited keynot speakers are:

Ranulfo Romo (opening lecture) Professor of Neuroscience Institute of Cellular Physiology National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Moses Chao Professor of Cell Biology, Physiology and Neuroscience and Psychiatry Departments of Cell Biology (Skirball) and Physiology and Neuroscience and Psychiatry New York University

Ray Dolan Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging University College London

Jutta Engel Cellular and molecular physiology – Hair cell physiology University of Tübingen

Magdalena Goetz Professor of Physiological Genomics Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

David McAlpine Professor of Auditory Neuroscience and Director of the Ear Institute University College London

Registration is open on the BBD 2008 website.

Posted on behalf of the ESC team:

The "European Students' Conference (ESC)" is one of the largest biomedical conferences worldwide and has been one of the main events at Charité Berlin for many years. Every year the ESC takes place at Charité, the Medical School of Freie Universitaet and Humboldt Universitaet in Berlin, Germany. This year's conference will be from 29th September - 3rd October 2008. The ESC is a platform for the promotion of the scientific offspring in the fields of biomedical research.

Young scientists from over 40 countries, mainly from Eastern and Western Europe, are invited to present the findings of their research projects to an international audience and to discuss their results with an interdisciplinary approach.

Topic: Since this year's motto is "Head forward: The Head – Physical Aspects and Psyche of the Human Being" neuroscience will be one of the main topics. Internationally distinguished neuroscientists will be invited to hold lectures in the fields of behavioural, cognitive, computational and medical neuroscience.

Scientific Contest: A jury of renowned senior scientists selects 350 out of approximately 1000 applicants to give an oral or a poster presentation of their scientific research. Each session features, on average, eight presenting participants who compete with one another in front of the student audience and a jury of senior scientists of the Charité and guests from abroad. The session winners will then compete with one another. We provide a prize purse of €10,000 which will be divided between all session winners. Furthermore, all accepted applicants have the opportunity to apply for a completely financed research award at the Charité Berlin. Application is done online on the ESC website. Submission deadline for abstracts is the 15th of June.

Vision: We aim to contribute to a good education of promising young scientists and future doctors. Hereby we wish to strengthen the international network. Furthermore we hope that the participants take the opportunity to broaden their minds.
 
Mission: To put our vision into practice we offer discussions about topics of biomedical research as well as social and ethical discourses.

The 5-days program consists of interactive sessions, workshops and lectures. These events will be chaired by distinguished professors, Nobel Price Winners, Ambassadors and nonprofit organizations.

In addition we plan cultural events and activities like Berlin Sightseeing Tour, a trip to Potsdam, a Welcome Dinner and a great Farewell Party to encourage the participants to get in contact for an intercultural and personal exchange of views and personally explore the history and culture of Berlin.

Please visit the ESC website for detailed information.
 

Scientific American published an online feature article "Science 2.0" about the use of "wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science".

Scientists are quite slow in embracing blogging, but other tools like open access science publishing PLoS ONE or wiki OpenWetWare are gaining popularity.

The article is also an experiment on "networked journalism", meaning that the readers are invited to contribute by commenting on its content and reporting before it gets forwarded to the press.