Christian Candler, a Birmingham, AL Native, Attends and Presents at Society for Neuroscience Conference

2017 Nov 20

Christian Candler, a Birmingham, AL native, traveled to Washington D.C. with four other Belmont students and Biology Professor Dr. Lori McGrew to attend and present at the The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Conference. SfNas 47th annual meeting, "Neuroscience 2017," is the world's largest neuroscience conference for scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. More than 30,000 colleagues from more than 80 countries gathered at the world's largest marketplace of ideas and tools for global neuroscience.

The conference opened with a session by physican and researcher Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer." Mukherjee spoke with SfN President Eric Nestler about the excitement and importance of communicating the promise of scientific inquiry to the public, among other things.

During the afternoon, McGrew presented a poster in the History and Teaching session entitled "Measuring Student Learning Using Closed-Book Timed Exams Versus Open-Book, Take-Home Exams." Students visited several other posters detailing current research in the field. The group wrapped up day 1 by attending the Presidential Lecture aInsights from Nonhuman Animals into the Neurobiology of Languagea by Dr. Jarvis. This lecture presented a modern model of language from molecular, circuit, to behavior levels. Jarvis described key concepts of language, including vocal learning and brain regions that are necessary for vocal language. While most of his work involved songbirds, Jarvis played clips of mouse vocalizations that were modified to be detectable by human ears. These mouse songs were remarkably similar to bird song and are helping researchers to better understand language across species.

On Sunday, the groups started the day by attending sessions on brain imaging in Danio rerio, studies of traumatic brain injury and mechanisms of memory. One of the dynamic posters demonstrated a technique for characterizing neural activity in swimming zebrafish by immobilizing their heads in agar gel. That evening, the students presented their research at the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience poster session and social. Candler and the other participants presented their research findings at the FUN poster session during the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.