Where Cognitive Neuroscience Meets Industry: Navigating the Intersections of Academia and Industry
In this talk, Mirta will share her journey from her education a mathematically-focused high school to her currently unconventional career in London, emphasizing the evolution from a local education in Croatia to international experiences in the US and UK. We will explore the concept of interdisciplinary careers in the modern world, viewing them through the framework of increasing demand, flexibility, and dynamism in the current workplace. We will underscore the significance of interdisciplinary research for launching careers outside of academia, and bolstering those within. I will challenge the conventional norm of working either in academia or industry, and encourage discussion about the opportunities for combining the two in a myriad of career opportunities. I’ll use examples from my own and others’ research to highlight opportunities for early career researchers to extend their work into practical applications. Such an approach leverages the strengths of both sectors, fostering innovation and practical applications of research findings. I hope these insights can offer valuable perspectives for those looking to navigate the evolving demands of the global job market, illustrating the advantages of a versatile skill set that spans multiple disciplines and allows extensions into exciting career options.
ALBA mentoring fireside chats: identifying mentorship needs
This is the first session in a series of three online fireside chats organised by the ALBA Network with the aims of understanding what’s not working in existing mentoring programmes in (neuro)science and identify the challenges and unmet mentorship needs of the next generation of scientists across the globe. The feedback from these sessions will be used to develop a tailored ALBA mentoring programme.
Self-direction in daily stress management: the solution for mental health issues
In the lecture Yvette Roke and Jamie Hoefakker will discuss the positive and negative effects of daily stress on mental health. They will also highlight which characteristics are likely to cause more stress related issues, and why recovery time is very important. They will give an understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in relation to daily stress and they will discuss the app, SAM the stress autism mate, developed and investigated (SCED design) in co-creation with their patients with ASD.
Growing Up in Academia with Onur Güntürkün
There are stories of resilience, passion, braveness and determination and the one of Onur Güntürkün. He has managed to beat the odds in so many ways, from moving countries, surviving the polio, establishing a new field against the advice of a senior professor and much more, all the while keeping a positive spirit, an endless curiosity and the braveness to keep going despite adversities. Join me on Monday, February 28, 2022, 6 p.m. (CET) for a Growing Up in Academia with Onur Güntürkün.
Navigating academia as an LGBTQIA+ neuroscientist
The ALBA Network is organizing a webinar on LGBTQIA+ inclusion and visibility. This special event will feature a panel of established scientists in brain research who identify as LGBTQIA+. Speaker will discuss their goals, challenges and successes while navigating academia as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Registration is free but mandatory.
Emergent scientists discuss Alzheimer's disease
This seminar is part of our “Emergent Scientists” series, an initiative that provides a platform for scientists at the critical PhD/postdoc transition period to share their work with a broad audience and network. Summary: These talks cover Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research in both mice and humans. Christiana will discuss in particular the translational aspects of applying mouse work to humans and the importance of timing in disease pathology and intervention (e.g. timing between AD biomarkers vs. symptom onset, timing of therapy, etc.). Siddharth will discuss a rare variant of Alzheimer’s disease called “Logopenic Progressive Aphasia”, which presents with temporo-parietal atrophy yet relative sparing of hippocampal circuitry. Siddharth will discuss how, despite the unusual anatomical basis underlying this AD variant, degeneration of the angular gyrus in the left inferior parietal lobule contributes to memory deficits similar to those of typical amnesic Alzheimer’s disease. Christiana’s abstract: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that causes severe deterioration of memory, cognition, behavior, and the ability to perform daily activities. The disease is characterized by the accumulation of two proteins in fibrillar form; Amyloid-β forms fibrils that accumulate as extracellular plaques while tau fibrils form intracellular tangles. Here we aim to translate findings from a commonly used AD mouse model to AD patients. Here we initiate and chronically inhibit neuropathology in lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) layer two neurons in an AD mouse model. This is achieved by over-expressing P301L tau virally and chronically activating hM4Di DREADDs intracranially using the ligand dechloroclozapine. Biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is measured longitudinally in the model using microdialysis, and we use this same system to intracranially administer drugs aimed at halting AD-related neuropathology. The models are additionally tested in a novel contextual memory task. Preliminary findings indicate that viral injections of P301L tau into LEC layer two reveal direct projections between this region and the outer molecular layer of dentate gyrus and the rest of hippocampus. Additionally, phosphorylated tau co-localize with ‘starter cells’ and appear to spread from the injection site. Preliminary microdialysis results suggest that the concentrations of CSF amyloid-β and tau proteins mirror changes observed along the disease cascade in patients. The disease-modifying drugs appear to halt neuropathological development in this preclincial model. These findings will lead to a novel platform for translational AD research, linking the extensive research done in rodents to clinical applications. Siddharth’s abstract: A distributed brain network supports our ability to remember past events. The parietal cortex is a critical member of this network, yet, its exact contributions to episodic remembering remain unclear. Neurodegenerative syndromes affecting the posterior neocortex offer a unique opportunity to understand the importance and role of parietal regions to episodic memory. In this talk, I introduce and explore the rare neurodegenerative syndrome of Logopenic Progressive Aphasia (LPA), an aphasic variant of Alzheimer’s disease presenting with early, left-lateralized temporo-parietal atrophy, amidst relatively spared hippocampal integrity. I then discuss two key studies from my recent Ph.D. work showcasing pervasive episodic and autobiographical memory dysfunction in LPA, to a level comparable to typical, amnesic Alzheimer’s disease. Using multimodal neuroimaging, I demonstrate how degeneration of the angular gyrus in the left inferior parietal lobule, and its structural connections to the hippocampus, contribute to amnesic profiles in this syndrome. I finally evaluate these findings in the context of memory profiles in other posterior cortical neurodegenerative syndromes as well as recent theoretical models underscoring the importance of the parietal cortex in the integration and representation of episodic contextual information.
Growing up in Science
Have you ever wondered what your advisor struggled with as a graduate student? What they struggle with now? Growing up in science is a conversation series featuring personal narratives of becoming and being a scientist, with a focus on the unspoken challenges of a life in science. Growing up in Science was started in 2014 at New York University and is now worldwide. This article describes the origin and impact of the series. At a typical Growing up in Science event, one faculty member shares their life story, with a focus on struggles, failures, doubts, detours, and weaknesses. Common topics include dealing with expectations, impostor syndrome, procrastination, luck, rejection, conflicts with advisors, and work-life balance, life outside academia but these topics are always embedded in the speaker’s broader narrative. Cortex Club is hosting its first Growing up in science event! Join us on Friday the 31st July at 4pm for hearing the unofficial story of Dr André Marques-Smith, computational neuroscientist at CoMind (read his official and unofficial story at https://cortexclub.com/event/growing-up-in-science-oxford/). Details to join the talk will be circulated via the mailing list (to join our mailing list, follow the instructions at https://cortexclub.com/join-us/).