Happy 18th Birthday, NeNa!
Written by Renée Hartig
NeNa came alive again this October, embracing evolution, artificial neural networks, and brain scaling.
Eighteen years in the making, the conference organized for junior scientists by junior scientists
celebrated its birthday with many friendly companions: 45+ bright, young neuroscientists, Prof.
Günther Palm, and brain soup master, Prof. Suzana Herculano-Houzel.
It’s amazing what can happen when
you send dozens of neuroscientists
into Schwabia’s enchanting Black
Forest on a quest for knowledge and
networking. This is the kind of rare
collaborative atmosphere you can ex-
perience when you venture outside of
the lab. Just bring all things necessary
for an adventure: poster, presentation
slides, a change of clothes, and some
shisha. Prism goggles? Sure, why not!
ence presented at the conference. The
talks and posters proved integrative
and touched upon topics, such as con-
nectomics, cellular functions, monkey
EEG, and many others.
It’s important to make learning fun, or
at least learn in a fun way.
The NeNa conference lasted only
about 2.5 days, a timespan affording
two nights and three days. So, really
when you break it down like that, im-
agine how little time you have to dis-
cuss science, drink coffee, and engage
in short-to-long-term memory con-
solidation (aka sleep).
There was undoubtedly plenty to
learn across the breadth of neurosci-
by Gizem Altan
Original artwork for NeNa 2017 poster, by
Ian Chong
28 | NEUROMAG |November 2017
On the first night, Suzana Herculano
gave the keynote lecture (Neuromag
brought the lecture video to you:
www.neuromag.net/NeNa2017.html)
on brain scaling in evolution. Her talk,
reminiscent of her recently published
book, The Human Advantage, also in-
corporated new data built upon the
research established from the original
‘brain soup’ work. Overall, it was great
to have her with us in the Black Forest
and we definitely appreciated her fly-
ing all the way from Tennessee!
Our second keynote lecturer, Günther
Palm, traveled a slightly shorter dis-
tance to reach the Schwarzwald (Black
Forest). Visiting from Ulm, where he
works as a Professor in the Depart-
ment of Neuroinformatics, Günther
partook in all of the activities, includ-
ing the evening parties and a game of
Cards Against Humanity. During his
talk there was less tomfoolery and
more emphasis on the evolution of
neural networks. The talk was inform-