Dozens from Picower present research at SfN

This was the third SfN for Nicole Aponte Santiago, a graduate student in the lab of Professor Troy Littleton. This year she presented twice. On Nov. 4 she spoke on a panel offering advice about professional networking and the next day displayed a poster on experiments probing how the competitive interplay that arises when multiple neurons connect to the same muscle affects the development and growth of those connections.

Two years ago, when she last attended the conference, her project was just getting started. She said that visitors to her poster shared valuable thoughts and suggestions about the research and a lot of encouragement that it would be valuable.

“People were showing a lot of interest in my project which made me even more excited and made me feel that OK, this is something useful for people in my field,” she recalled. “People were excited to see what results I would get.”

This year some of those same people returned to her to her poster, she said, and they were excited to see how the experiments have been taking shape. Visitors asked good questions and offered interesting interpretations of her results as well as ideas for new experiments and methods, she said, providing her a new dose of encouragement.

Visitor traffic kept some poster presenters on their feet and surrounded for hours, ringed by a crowds four or five people deep. Chen Sun, a graduate student in Susumu Tonegawa’s lab spent the entire afternoon of Nov. 6 energetically explaining his research showing that “serial” cells in the hippocampus uniquely keep track of sequences of events – such as laps in a race. For the whole afternoon his audience was never less than about a dozen people.

Josiah Boivin, a postdoc in the lab of Professor Elly Nedivi, fielded a slew of questions as he discussed the lab’s innovative two-photon microscope that radically speeds up imaging by scanning a whole line at a time rather than point by point. He plans to use the technology to more closely monitor and study the frequent assembly and removal of inhibitory neural connections, or synapses, in live animals, which could help explain how neural connections change with experience.

Tsai lab graduate student Mitchell Murdock, meanwhile, entertained strong traffic at a poster describing how he uses a technique called Archon, developed in Professor Ed Boyden lab, that engineers neurons to visually report their electrical activity by glowing, which can make measuring electrical activity easier. Murdock, who studies Alzheimer’s disease, is using the technology to determine the role of individual cells in the apparent breakdown of key brain rhythms in the condition.

At different times the Chung and Tye labs each commanded neighborhoods four or five posters long. Tye lab members Cody Siciliano, a postdoc, and Habiba Noamany, an undergraduate at her first SfN, reported on different aspects of how a particular circuit between the prefrontal cortex and a deep region called the periaqueductal gray appears key to encoding aversive experiences. When the circuit is inhibited, they found, animals are more likely to disregard aversive stimuli including ones that would otherwise curb their consumption of alcohol. The Chung lab, meanwhile, showed off several new techniques in the lab dedicated to exposing, preserving and labeling the brain’s full anatomy, connectivity, and functionality for imaging at scales from molecules and synapses to the whole organ. At his talk on Nov. 6, Chung described how he’s brought this suite of tools to collaborations with Tsai, to locate harmful proteins early in Alzheimer’s disease, and with Tonegawa to trace memory engrams all around the brain. He also mentioned his new grant to map the entire human brain.

With a crowd big enough that people were standing in the back, Miller lab graduate student Jacob Donoghue described how general anesthesia causes information flow among brain regions to become incoherent and fragmented but that consciousness can rapidly be restored by stimulating the thalamus. Speaking the next day, two members of Professor Matt Wilson’s lab, postdoc Honi Sanders and research scientist Hector Penagos, discussed their studies using rodent experiments and theoretical models to understand how representations among hippocampal neurons allow the brain to learn and remember the distinguishing features of environments and how to best navigate environments to maximize rewards.

Was SfN itself a rewarding experience? Aponte said she drew inspiration from her encounters at the conference. And so did Sun, even after explaining his poster on serial cells at marathon length yet at the pace of a full sprint. Like a distance runner, he described feeling both elated and exhausted when it was all over.

“They were very enthusiastic,” Sun said of his audience. “Because they were very enthusiastic, it kind of feeds back. That’s why four hours felt like half an hour.”