The Institute for Neurosciences has held its XX Christmas Meeting

22 de December de 2023

Young researchers from many parts of the world have come to the Institute for Neurosciences (IN), a joint center of the Miguel Hernández University (UMH) of Elche and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), to participate in the twentieth edition of the Christmas Meeting. The event, which took place on December 20 and 21 at the Santiago Ramón y Cajal building in the Sant Joan d'Alacant Campus, has allowed neuroscientists working abroad to get to know the IN.

Speakers and organizers of the twentieth edition of the Christmas Meeting at the Institute for Neurosciences UMH-CSIC.

This event has a long tradition. It was born about 20 years ago with the specific objective of facilitating contact and synergies between IN researchers and promising young people who work in different fields of neuroscience and who may be interested in joining the IN research team: “It represents an excellent opportunity to attract talent. Many of our researchers participated in this meeting when they were working abroad and ended up joining our staff,” says Ángel Barco, director of the Institute of Neurosciences.

During the two days of the Christmas Meeting, several talk sessions and poster presentations were held in which participants presented the work they were carrying out. In this way, IN researchers have been able to share the latest findings in the field, as well as common experiences.

In addition, professor at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) Christian Lüscher, who heads the Addiction and Dopamine System research group and is one of the world's leading experts in this field, gave the keynote lecture. During his talk, he spoke about the synaptic bases of drug addiction.

Photo: Researcher Christian Lüscher during the keynote conference.

At the end of the meeting, the awards were presented. The award for the best talk went to the researcher at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (London) Sara Mederos, who in her speech spoke about brain circuits for experience-dependent fear responses. On the other hand, the recognition for the best poster has gone to the researchers of the Institute for Neurosciences Alicia Alonso, for ‘The role of callosal connections mediating the interhemispheric communication of the barrel cortex’, and Aysha Bhojwani, for ‘Microglia regulate learning and memory through NFKB’. The winners of the third edition of the #SciencePhoto_IN scientific photography contest have also been awarded.

The meeting ended with a toast to wish Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all those who have come to Alicante to learn about the Institute for Neurosciences and the work carried out in this research center.

The organization of this Christmas Meeting has been in charge of IN researchers Teresa Femenía, Andreas Kardamakis, and Félix Leroy. The realization of the event has been possible thanks to the collaboration of the Severo Ochoa Excellence Program of the IN, the State Research Agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities of the Government of Spain, the PROMETEO Program of the Generalitat Valenciana, and the companies Izasa Scientific, Stoelting Europe, QUIMA S.L., Leica microscopes, ZEISS and Biolab.

More information: full program in the attached document (file pdf)

Source: Institute for Neurosciences UMH-CSIC (in.comunicacion@umh.es)