Exercise
exercise
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
Applications are invited for our third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school since 2023, designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision. We plan a coherent, graduate-level, syllabus on the integration of experimental data with theory and models, featuring lectures, guided exercises and discussion sessions. The summer school will end with a Systems Vision Science symposium on frontier topics on August 20-22, with additional invited and contributed presentations and posters. Call for contributions and participations to the symposium will be sent out spring of 2025. All summer school participants are invited to attend, and welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Brain Health
Are integrative, multidisciplinary, and pragmatic models possible? The #PsychMapping experience
This presentation delves into the necessity for simplified models in the field of psychological sciences to cater to a diverse audience of practitioners. We introduce the #PsychMapping model, evaluate its merits and limitations, and discuss its place in contemporary scientific culture. The #PsychMapping model is the product of an extensive literature review, initially within the realm of sport and exercise psychology and subsequently encompassing a broader spectrum of psychological sciences. This model synthesizes the progress made in psychological sciences by categorizing variables into a framework that distinguishes between traits (e.g., body structure and personality) and states (e.g., heart rate and emotions). Furthermore, it delineates internal traits and states from the externalized self, which encompasses behaviour and performance. All three components—traits, states, and the externalized self—are in a continuous interplay with external physical, social, and circumstantial factors. Two core processes elucidate the interactions among these four primary clusters: external perception, encompassing the mechanism through which external stimuli transition into internal events, and self-regulation, which empowers individuals to become autonomous agents capable of exerting control over themselves and their actions. While the model inherently oversimplifies intricate processes, the central question remains: does its pragmatic utility outweigh its limitations, and can it serve as a valuable tool for comprehending human behaviour?
Are integrative, multidisciplinary, and pragmatic models possible? The #PsychMapping experience
This presentation delves into the necessity for simplified models in the field of psychological sciences to cater to a diverse audience of practitioners. We introduce the #PsychMapping model, evaluate its merits and limitations, and discuss its place in contemporary scientific culture. The #PsychMapping model is the product of an extensive literature review, initially within the realm of sport and exercise psychology and subsequently encompassing a broader spectrum of psychological sciences. This model synthesizes the progress made in psychological sciences by categorizing variables into a framework that distinguishes between traits (e.g., body structure and personality) and states (e.g., heart rate and emotions). Furthermore, it delineates internal traits and states from the externalized self, which encompasses behaviour and performance. All three components—traits, states, and the externalized self—are in a continuous interplay with external physical, social, and circumstantial factors. Two core processes elucidate the interactions among these four primary clusters: external perception, encompassing the mechanism through which external stimuli transition into internal events, and self-regulation, which empowers individuals to become autonomous agents capable of exerting control over themselves and their actions. While the model inherently oversimplifies intricate processes, the central question remains: does its pragmatic utility outweigh its limitations, and can it serve as a valuable tool for comprehending human behaviour?
How Intermittent Bioenergetic Challenges Enhance Brain and Body Health
Humans and other animals evolved in habitats fraught with a range of environmental challenges to their bodies and brains. Accordingly, cells and organ systems possess adaptive stress-responsive signaling pathways that enable them to not only withstand environmental challenges, but also to prepare for future challenges and function more efficiently. These phylogenetically conserved processes are the foundation of the hormesis principle in which repeated exposures to low to moderate amounts of an environmental challenge improve cellular and organismal fitness. Here I describe cellular and molecular mechanisms by which cells in the brain and body respond to intermittent fasting and exercise in ways that enhance performance and counteract aging and disease processes. Switching back and forth between adaptive stress response (during fasting and exercise) and growth and plasticity (eating, resting, sleeping) modes enhances the performance and resilience of various organ systems. While pharmacological interventions that engage a particular hormetic mechanism are being developed, it seems unlikely that any will prove superior to fasting and exercise.
Neural epigenetic mechanisms of early life exercise interventions
Uncovering the molecular effectors of diet and exercise
Despite the profound effects of nutrition and physical activity on human health, our understanding of the molecules mediating the salutary effects of specific foods or activities remains remarkably limited. Here, we share our ongoing studies that use unbiased and high-resolution metabolomics technologies to uncover the molecules and molecular effectors of diet and exercise. We describe how exercise stimulates the production of Lac-Phe, a blood-borne signaling metabolite that suppresses feeding and obesity. Ablation of Lac-Phe biosynthesis in mice increases food intake and obesity after exercise. We also describe the discovery of an orphan metabolite, BHB-Phe. Ketosis-inducible BHB-Phe is a congener of exercise-inducible Lac-Phe, produced in CNDP2+ cells when levels of BHB are high, and functions to lower body weight and adiposity in ketosis. Our data uncover an unexpected and underappreciated signaling role for metabolic fuel derivatives in mediating the cardiometabolic benefits of diet and exercise. These data also suggest that diet and exercise may mediate their physiologic effects on energy balance via a common family of molecules and overlapping signaling pathways.
A microbiome-dependent gut-brain pathway regulates motivation for exercise
AI-assisted language learning: Assessing learners who memorize and reason by analogy
Vocabulary learning applications like Duolingo have millions of users around the world, but yet are based on very simple heuristics to choose teaching material to provide to their users. In this presentation, we will discuss the possibility to develop more advanced artificial teachers, which would be based on modeling of the learner’s inner characteristics. In the case of teaching vocabulary, understanding how the learner memorizes is enough. When it comes to picking grammar exercises, it becomes essential to assess how the learner reasons, in particular by analogy. This second application will illustrate how analogical and case-based reasoning can be employed in an alternative way in education: not as the teaching algorithm, but as a part of the learner’s model.
Brain-muscle signaling coordinates exercise adaptations in Drosophila
Chronic exercise is a powerful intervention that lowers the incidence of most age-related diseases while promoting healthy metabolism in humans. However, illness, injury or age prevent many humans from consistently exercising. Thus, identification of molecular targets that can mimic the benefits of exercise would be a valuable tool to improve health outcomes of humans with neurodegenerative or mitochondrial diseases, or those with enforced sedentary lifestyles. Using a novel exercise platform for Drosophila, we have identified octopaminergic neurons as a key subset of neurons that are critical for the exercise response, and shown that periodic daily stimulation of these neurons can induce a systemic exercise response in sedentary flies. Octopamine is released into circulation where it signals through various octopamine receptors in target tissues and induces gene expression changes similar to exercise. In particular, we have identified several key molecules that respond to octopamine in skeletal muscle, including the mTOR modulator Sestrin, the PGC-1α homolog Spargel, and the FNDC5/Irisin homolog Iditarod. We are currently testing these molecules as potential therapies for multiple diseases that reduce mobility, including the PolyQ disease SCA2 and the mitochondrial disease Barth syndrome.
CANCELLED
Lifestyle, cardiovascular health, and the brain
Lifestyle factors such as sleep, diet, stress, and exercise, profoundly influence cardiovascular health. Seeking to understand how lifestyle affects our biology is important for at least two reasons. First, it can expose a particular lifestyle’s biological impact, which can be leveraged for adopting specific public health policies. Second, such work may identify crucial molecular mechanisms central to how the body adapts to our environments. These insights can then be used to improve our lives. In this talk, I will focus on recent work in the lab exploring how lifestyle factors influence cardiovascular health. I will show how combining tools of neuroscience, hematology, immunology, and vascular biology helps us better understand how the brain shapes leukocytes in response to environmental perturbations. By “connecting the dots” from the brain to the vessel wall, we can begin to elucidate how lifestyle can both maintain and perturb salutogenesis.
fMRI of cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression emotion regulation strategies in basic and clinically applied contexts
The ability to effectively regulate emotions is a fundamental skill related to physical and psychological health. In this talk, I will present behavioral and fMRI data from several different studies that examined cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression emotion regulation strategies in healthy controls participants and in the context of randomized trials of cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness- based stress reduction, and aerobic exercise as interventions for adults with anxiety disorders. We will also examine the implementation of different types of functional connectivity analytic approaches to probe intervention-related brain mechanism changes.
The neuroscience of lifestyle interventions for mental health: the BrainPark approach
Our everyday behaviours, such as physical activity, sleep, diet, meditation, and social connections, have a potent impact on our mental health and the health of our brain. BrainPark is working to harness this power by developing lifestyle-based interventions for mental health and investigating how they do and don’t change the brain, and for whom they are most effective. In this webinar, Dr Rebecca Segrave and Dr Chao Suo will discuss BrainPark’s approach to developing lifestyle-based interventions to help people get better control of compulsive behaviours, and the multi-modality neuroimaging approaches they take to investigating outcomes. The webinar will explore two current BrainPark trials: 1. Conquering Compulsions - investigating the capacity of physical exercise and meditation to alter reward processing and help people get better control of a wide range of unhelpful habits, from drinking to eating to cleaning. 2. The Brain Exercise Addiction Trial (BEAT) - an NHMRC funded investigation into the capacity of physical exercise to reverse the brain harms caused by long-term heavy cannabis use. Dr Rebecca Segrave is Deputy Director and Head of Interventions Research at BrainPark, the David Winston Turner Senior Research Fellow within the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, and an AHRPA registered Clinical Neuropsychologist. Dr Chao Suo is Head of Technology and Neuroimaging at BrainPark and a Research Fellow within the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health.
Leadership Support and Workplace Psychosocial Stressors
Research evidence indicates that psychosocial stressors such as work-life stress serves as a negative occupational exposure relating to poor health behaviors including smoking, poor food choices, low levels of exercise, and even decreased sleep time, as well as a number of chronic health outcomes. The association between work-life stress and adverse health behaviors and chronic health suggests that Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) interventions such as leadership support trainings may be helpful in mitigating effects of work-life stress and improving health, consistent with the Total Worker Health approach. This presentation will review workplace psychosocial stressors and leadership training approaches to reduces stress and improve health, highlighting a randomized controlled trial, the Military Employee Sleep and Health study.
Using human pluripotent stem cells to model obesity in vitro
Obesity and neurodegeneration lead to millions of premature deaths each year and lack broadly effective treatments. Obesity is largely caused by the abnormal function of cell populations in the hypothalamus that regulate appetite. We have developed methods generate human hypothalamic neurons from hPSCs to study how they respond to nutrients and hormones (e.g. leptin) and how disease-associated mutations alter their function. Since human hypothalamic neurons can be produced in large numbers, are functionally responsive, have a human genome that can be readily edited, and are in culture environment that can be readily controlled, there is an unprecedented opportunity to study the genetic and environmental factors underlying obesity. In addition, we are fascinated by the fact that mid-life obesity is a risk factor for dementia later in life, and caloric restriction, exercise, and certain anti-obesity drugs are neuroprotective, suggesting that there are shared mechanisms between obesity and neurodegeneration. Studies of HPSC-derived hypothalamic neurons may help bridge the mechanistic gulf between human genetic data and organismic phenotypes, revealing new therapeutic targets.
Blurring the boundaries between neuroscience and organismal physiology
Work in my laboratory is based on the assumptions that we do not know yet how all physiological functions are regulated and that mouse genetics by allowing to identify novel inter-organ communications is the most efficient ways to identify novel regulation of physiological functions. We test these two contention through the study of bone which is the organ my lab has studied since its inception. Based on precise cell biological and clinical reasons that will be presented during the seminar we hypothesized that bone should be a regulator of energy metabolism and reproduction and identified a bone-derived hormone termed osteocalcin that is responsible of these regulatory events. The study of this hormone revealed that in addition to its predicted functions it also regulates brain size, hippocampus development, prevents anxiety and depression and favors spatial learning and memory by signaling through a specific receptor we characterized. As will be presented, we elucidated some of the molecular events accounting for the influence of osteocalcin on brain and showed that maternal osteocalcin is the pool of this hormone that affects brain development. Subsequently and looking at all the physiological functions regulated by osteocalcin, i.e., memory, the ability to exercise, glucose metabolism, the regulation of testosterone biosynthesis, we realized that are all need or regulated in the case of danger. In other words it suggested that osteocalcin is an hormone needed to sense and overcome acute danger. Consonant with this hypothesis we next showed this led us to demonstrate that bone via osteocalcin is needed to mount an acute stress response through molecular and cellular mechanisms that will be presented during the seminar. overall, an evolutionary appraisal of bone biology, this body of work and experiments ongoing in the lab concur to suggest 1] the appearance of bone during evolution has changed how physiological functions as diverse as memory, the acute stress response but also exercise and glucose metabolism are regulated and 2] identified bone and osteocalcin as its molecular vector, as an organ needed to sense and response to danger.
Machine reasoning in histopathologic image analysis
Deep learning is an emerging computational approach inspired by the human brain’s neural connectivity that has transformed machine-based image analysis. By using histopathology as a model of an expert-level pattern recognition exercise, we explore the ability for humans to teach machines to learn and mimic image-recognition and decision making. Moreover, these models also allow exploration into the ability for computers to independently learn salient histological patterns and complex ontological relationships that parallel biological and expert knowledge without the need for explicit direction or supervision. Deciphering the overlap between human and unsupervised machine reasoning may aid in eliminating biases and improving automation and accountability for artificial intelligence-assisted vision tasks and decision-making. Aleksandar Ivanov Title:
Paradoxical effect of exercise on the long-term stability of hippocampal place code
COSYNE 2022
Paradoxical effect of exercise on the long-term stability of hippocampal place code
COSYNE 2022
Acute aerobic exercise at different intensities modulates motor learning performance and cortical excitability in healthy individuals
FENS Forum 2024
Acute bouts of exercise in preschool children do not affect working memory capacity but accelerate the execution of the task
FENS Forum 2024
Cerebral blood flow and executive function changes in response to active and passive aerobic exercise
FENS Forum 2024
Dorsal hippocampal CA3-CA1 long-term plasticity and the effect of aerobic exercise in anaesthetised and awake sub-chronic phencyclidine rat model for schizophrenia
FENS Forum 2024
Effect of a combined intervention of tDCS and physical exercise in people over 65 years of age: FRAIL TRAIN
FENS Forum 2024
Exercise-based rescue strategies for early striatal synaptic impairment and motor abnormalities caused by alpha-synuclein
FENS Forum 2024
Exercise accelerates place cell representational drift
FENS Forum 2024
Exercise partially prevents motor alteration induced by early sensorimotor restriction in rats
FENS Forum 2024
Exercise and risperidone intervention improving neuroplasticity in juvenile female rats
FENS Forum 2024
Facilitating memory consolidation through light exercise: The role of the coeruleo-hippocampal dopaminergic pathway
FENS Forum 2024
The immediate impact of moderate exercise on working memory capacity
FENS Forum 2024
Impact of type 2 diabetes and high-intensity interval exercise on neurogenesis, angiogenesis, and the accumulation of lipid droplets in the hippocampus
FENS Forum 2024
Investigating the effects of chronic aerobic exercise on cognitive deficits and inflammatory markers in the sub-chronic phencyclidine mouse model for schizophrenia research
FENS Forum 2024
Investigating the impact of long-term endurance exercise on cognitive function and neuroinflammation in male and female C57BL/6J mice
FENS Forum 2024
Orexin as a neuropsychological basis for temptation-resistant voluntary exercise
FENS Forum 2024
Paternal exposure to voluntary exercise or corticosterone modifies the sperm long noncoding RNA profile, and their microinjection alters adult behavioural endophenotypes
FENS Forum 2024
Physical exercise impact on ageing-related pathways across generations in C. elegans
FENS Forum 2024
Sex-dependent differences of short-term aerobic endurance exercise on systemic LPS-induced inflammation and microglial activation in young C57BL/6J mice
FENS Forum 2024
Sex-dependent effects of voluntary physical exercise on object recognition memory restoration after traumatic brain injury in middle-aged rats
FENS Forum 2024
Stress vulnerability conferred by CX3CR1 deficiency is sexually dimorphic and responds to physical exercise in mice
FENS Forum 2024