Neurodays 2021: a look back

This year, the event took place on 8 and 9 of November in the welcoming Hexagone building of Luminy campus, Marseille. PhD students in Neurosciences organised a fully animated meeting, including lectures, poster sessions and even a movie show, to discuss current involvements of neurosciences in society, notably regarding the covid-19 crisis.

As a reminder, Neurodays is a scientific event organized by and for Neuroscience doctoral students with the goal of bringing together leading scientists and young researchers and favour interactions.

The context of the last year and a half has had a deep impact on our societies and we think that it is of great interest for all of us to explore how our field of research has reacted to it and how we can contribute to understand and propose solutions to some of the problems that the pandemic has aggravated.

What happened during those two days?

First, along with coffee times and lunches, the 80 or so participants were given lectures from noteworthy personalities in the Neurosciences field such as Marie-Pierre Moisan, PhD, who presented her work on micronutrients and neurophysiological consequences of different diets. The most motivated PhD students presented their works in a poster session.

After that, Eduardo Gascon Gonzalo, from INT, was invited to present his researches on molecular mechanisms of social cognition. François Gonon, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux, held a lecture about the Ethics of communication of neuroscience research to the general public. To conclude the first day, a documentary movie on “The power of touch” in Neuroscience, animated by Rochelle Ackerley, from the LNC, was proposed and opened to everybody.

Second day

The following day was introduced by Rochelle Ackerley, who presented, in the continuation of the day-before movie, her work entitled Perspectives on the function of human touch. Her lecture was then followed by a second poster session and the afternoon was dedicated to the presentations of Jean-Michel Revest, a researcher at the Neurocentre Magendie, INSERM, and Caroline Strube, PhD and new partner at the LNC.

While Jean-Michel held a lecture on Physiopathology & therapeutic approaches of stress-related diseases, Caroline reminded the importance of Ethics, Scientific Integrity and society’s view on scientific research through her presentation. Eventually, students work got rewarded through a podium ranking the most convincing poster presentations and the event ended with a roundtable discussion between speakers and participants to discuss the future of those ones in the field of Neurosciences.

And the winners are … !

For their hard work and quality presentations, students having designed posters were granted a rank according to the most convincing ones, here is the podium:

1. Emma Acerbo
2. Florian Missey
3a. Julie Buron
3b. Thomas Morvan (same points as Julie)
4. Hugo Ladret

We are proud of them and would like to thank our sponsors l’Occitane and the FSDIE for supporting the organization.

Want to see more ? Have a look at the gallery ! NeuroMarseille covered the event along the way, providing insights about the success of this event !