NeuroFrance feedbacks

My favorite special lecture was the “PL07 the retention of memory and first steps in one facet of social neuroscience” from R. Morris.
This legend of behavior and memory neuroscience introduces us some of is lifelong research on learning and memory, and specifically whether and how the encoding and retention of memory depends on the plasticity of the brain. This brilliant presentation went from cellular and mechanistic aspect to memory theories such as the synaptic tagging theory.
It is always a privilege to listen Richard Morris and its remarkable knowledge on memory mechanisms.

I really enjoyed Richard Morris's presentation on the last day of the conference. I discovered an approach to behaviour that I really appreciate.

NeuroFrance 2021 was the first international scientific gathering I took a part in. It was a really enriching experience that allowed me to delve into new themes in neurosciences. My interest was drawn toward more “outsider” themes like the role of glia or the autonomous nervous system.

The NeuroFrance 2021 meeting covered an impressive range of experimental and theoretical research topics in neuroscience ranging from molecular mechanisms related to synaptic vesicles and receptors signaling, cellular and sub-cellular mechanisms associated to control of behavior, to neural population dynamics, the emergent properties elicited by multi-systemic interactions (endocrine, autonomic, etc), to the socialneuroscience and cognition in the context of inter-subject interactions.

However, what I liked the most about this meeting was the emphasis put on the translational aspects of neuroscience research.During the three days of the conference one had the opportunity to enjoy talks and participate to discussions about many cutting edge neuroscience works associated with clinical applications and clinical trials.
In my opinion, the emphasis on translational research in neuroscience is a hallmark of the NeuroFrance meeting which differentiate it from other neuroscience conferences.

The benefit for me to attend the NeuroFrance were:
📌 To present my work to peers and get feed back from expert in the field
📌 To do some networking
📌 To attend brilliant presentations and discover new researches.

Thanks again to the NeuroMarseille - NeuroSchool for supporting my application !

The benefit for me to attend the NeuroFrance were:
📌 Discovering the work of teams I didn't know about (useful for orienting myself towards a post-doctoral fellowship)
📌 Getting advices during the mentoring sessions
📌 Be able to present my work throught a poster and get feedbacks.

This event was also an occasion for me to present my first results gathered during my PhD through a poster. Also the virtual format is not ideal for this kind of interaction, I manage to attract a few people from outside my lab and had interesting discussions about my project.

I found several talks, posters and discussions, including those of the satellite workshop on AI, particularly inspiring and relevant for my ongoing projects. More specifically, my current work in the Dynamical Brain Mapping Group in Marseille, involves the development and optimization of methods for detecting epileptiform events (e.g. ripples, fast-ripples, interictal spikes) in recordings obtained from patients suffering from refractory focal epilepsy and animal models of epilepsy. In this regard, the talk of Lionel Dahan about epileptiform activity during REM sleep at early stage of Alzheimers disease highlighted the importance of developing optimized and robust detectors of epileptiformevents and also opens new possible applications for the tools I am working on.

During the “S31 Sleep and wake brain activities and memory processes” symposium, I learned the correlation between certain rhythms and local blood flow. For example there is a very large increase of vascular activity during REM sleep (5 times the baseline).

I found interesting post-doctoral fellowship opportunities in Scotland!

I particularly remember two talks; one which is indirectly linked to my current research about IRt phox2B interneurons in the brainstem implicated in the generation of the licking behavior. The other one about the characterization of the autonomous pelvic ganglion where the demonstration was astonishingly clear and straightforward even for a non-specialist audience like me.

Interdisciplinary translational research pave the way to advance basic neuroscience and brain understanding.