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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