Florian Sandhäger
NeNa 2016 Meeting Report *
Written by Renee Hartig
On a cool September day, a handful of young neuroscientists gathered in Tübingen to kick-off the start to another NeNa conference( in German, Neurowissenschaftliche Nachwuchskonferenz). Like the year before, and the year before that, we congregated at the central train station and boarded a coach bus to Schramberg, a quaint little town in the Black Forest of Southwestern Germany.
Unlike the previous years, however, we held the conference at the end of September, the last Monday through Wednesday to be exact. Perhaps it wasn’ t the best time, as a lot was already going on in Tübingen that week. But, despite all that, we had a final turnout of 30 participants, with two participants from Oxford and Lisbon. Whether we will choose the same dates for next year remains to be seen, but we always try to work around the big and popular Society for Neuroscience Conference in the States as well as other events in the community.
One might not realize this, but there is a lot of thought that goes into planning a conference. One thinks not just about the optimal date, but also finding a speaker, coordinating an agreeable topic, not to mention the logistical details such as whether or not the venue is accommodating and the food is satisfying. Granted it is difficult to have everything your way, but for NeNa, we strive to make it as best we can. We found Schramberg to be a comfortable venue, even with the lack of stable WLAN; it just reminds you that you are in the middle of the forest and should probably focus on socializing and discussing science. The food is generally good too. My advice: remember to save some for later when you have the midnight munchies.
I find NeNa to always be an enjoyable experience not just because of the social interaction with amazing, intelligent and open-minded individuals, but also because of the scientific presentations that stimulate intriguing discussions. I’ m always impressed by the quality of science conducted by my peers. For instance, we have Pablo Grassi who has attended NeNa for the past two years in a row. Last year Grassi won the award for best poster, and this year it was also a hard choice to make considering his organized layout and visual data representation of dynamic bi-stable Gestalt perception. However, this year the award ended up in the hands of one of our non-Tübingen researchers, Juan Carlos Mendez, who came all the way from Oxford to present his work on the temporal categorization in the supplementary motor area of the macaque.
We had another attendee coming from aboard, Scott Rennie, from the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme in Lisbon. Rennie actually took home the prize for the best talk as his videos of
rats working together to achieve high rewards in the Stag Hunt game captivated us all. Surely, the conference organizers had a tough time selecting who most exceeded the criteria for best poster and talk!
In addition to the insightful presentations, we had a couple of group workshops. The first one was combined with a short hike into the Black Forest, where we also had an impromptu photo shoot thanks to Florian Sandhäger who brought his sweet digital SLR camera! After returning from our hike, we found a nice spot on the grounds to break down into pairs and work on our personal development. Mara Thomas led the development workshop and helped us to assess what qualities we valued most in a job and what our strengths and weaknesses might tell us about ourselves. Everyone there certainly enjoyed learning more about themselves, nothing like a little psychological evaluation for and by neuroscientists. Later in the day we had another workshop on reference management systems, which was organized by Pooja Viswanathan. She explained her thoughtful approach to organizing hundreds of papers across different
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