You are perhaps set to head to San Diego, getting those slides in order for your talk or tweaking that poster. But maybe you can't head to SfN this year to be with around 20,000 other neuroscientists so you plan to dial in to some events virtually.
Might your schedule be just too crazy and you can't make time for the meeting at all? Or you are not a neuroscientist and won't be attending or tuning it, but are interested in hearing a bit about the research focused on the brain.
For all of these situations and others, here is a little post-Halloween treat for you: A sneak-peek of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) that is about to start in San Diego.
You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Amazon Music and Audible, Gaana, wherever else you get your podcasts and right here.
Helping me ask questions are also Dr. Shari Wiseman, chief editor of Nature Neuroscience, Dr. Elisa Floridiaa from Nature Communications and Tanya Lewis from Scientific American. A transcript is pasted in below.
... that's the beauty of the meeting. It's the ultimate big tent. And while many of us are actually trained as neuroscientists or neurologists or psychiatrists or neurosurgeons, we come together at this giant meeting.
And I think, I think this sort of anxiety, or maybe even tension about I'm a basic scientist, I shouldn't be dealing with disease has really, has really largely gone away over the last 10 years or 15 years, and I'm very happy to see that, because, and what I'm about to say is often viewed as controversial.
I think whether we're working on C. elegans or, in my case, the monkey model, you have to have an eye toward how your work relates to human health. And I think we're seeing that. I think we're seeing the maturation of neuroscience. John Morrison, University of California Davis and current president of the Society for Neuroscience
Note: These podcasts are produced to be heard. If you can, please tune in. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and there’s a human editor. But a transcript may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.
Transcript of the podcast: Sneek-peek of the 2025 SfN annual meeting
Neuroscience has not made a lot of progress in terms of the major brain disorders in the last 50 years, but I think that's going to change.
That’s Dr. John Morrison from the University of California at Davis. He is also the current president of the Society for Neuroscience.
Hi and welcome to Conversations with scientists. I’m science journalist Vivien Marx.
This is a sneak-peek of the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Dr Morrison will be talking about some things that meeting has in store and also more generally about research on the brain, about science policy. And about art.
If you haven’t heard of Life of a Neuron— it was an exciting immersive exhibit that Dr. Morrison and others as well as the Society for Neuroscience and Artechouse Studio put together. You could for instance walk through a model of a prefrontal cortex neuron and much else. I will put a link in the show notes where you can find out more about it. And sneak peek of a sneak peek they are thinking about bringing back the exhibit.
https://www.artechouse.com/program/life-of-a-neuron-nyc/
So Dr. Morrison will talk about the upcoming meeting as will Dr. Emilie Marcus from UCLA, who is also the incoming SfN Chair of the public education and communication committee of the Society for Neuroscience.
The meeting will be in San Diego this year it’s its usual tiny size with around 20,000 attendees, 4 Presidential lectures, 15 special lectures, 4 featured lectures, 10 symposia, 40 mini-symposia, more than 11,200 posters, 13 professional development workshops. And a bundle of press conferences.
No worries we are not going to talk all of these in this podcast just a few and also about some overarching trends. Helping me ask questions are also Dr. Shari Wiseman, chief editor of Nature Neuroscience, Dr. Elisa Floridiaa from Nature Communications and Tanya Lewis from Scientific American.
If you are a neuroscientist, please come along for this sneak peek of the annual meeting of SfN. If you are not a neuroscientist, all good please come along, too, this podcast is not just for neuroscientists.
John Morrison
Neuroscience has not made a lot of progress in terms of the major brain disorders in the last 50 years, but I think that's going to change.
Vivien
Hello, Dr Morrison, so nice to see you, and so nice to see your vineyard. All right,
John
Yes, well, I've been using that for a while. That's the view from the picnic grounds at Chappellet Vineyard in Napa.
Vivien
Ooh, I want to go, but thank you. You're bringing us there. Hi, Elisa, how are you? Good, Vivien, how are you? I am well, thank you. I'm glad to be here. And so I'm waiting for a few people from Nature Neuroscience, still and Nature Communications, they all said they were joining. And a colleague from Scientific American can't make it, or she might dial in in a little bit. So there's this small meeting that's about to start from the Society for Neuroscience. And I was wondering if you have a sense of how many people we will be attending, and you know how many talks and posters? Numbers are always fun, and I know it might be an estimate at this point. And there are on site kind of people who register. But just to get an idea, do you have an idea? Anyone?
John Morrison
Well, this is John, I think once again, we're expecting about 20,000 people, which is below our pre-pandemic level, but a very nice meeting. And Melissa, you may have actual numbers on the abstracts and that sort of thing.
Melissa
Yeah, the abstracts are more than 11,000 more than 11,200 so we're at this year, and then, yeah, as John said, we expect more than 20,000 registrants to join.
Vivien
Wow. Okay, so that's a lot of it to these. And abstracts means posters that just, the that's just the talks, right? Do you have a posters number?
Melissa
That's that that includes the posters. So that's the the 11,200 is entirely counting just posters. So, yeah, wow.
Vivien
Well, I'll let you take it away. Dr Morrison, I know you can't give us a summary of the entire thing. I'm happy to stay here and procrastinate on my other stories, but I know that there's a presidential lecture series that I took a peek at, and I'm sure there are things that are important to you, and then we can bug you with questions along the way.
John Morrison [4:40]
Okay, well, hopefully we'll get Emilie, on too, to go through the press conferences. But yeah, I will start with the with the presidential lectures. One of the great privileges of being president is you get to choose the four presidential lectures. And so I think, like, like previous presidents, you tend to choose some of your favorite scientists and your favorite science. And in this case, I'm really, really happy my first four choices said yes, and I'll just go through them briefly.
So Earl Miller is from MIT, and he's going to present his work on prefrontal cortex. He's, I think, one of the very leading people on how prefrontal cortex does its thing in terms of goal directed behavior and cognition. And he, early on, said, prefrontal cortex makes the rules for goal directed behavior and then can modify those rules, which I thought was a very insightful take on prefrontal cortex, and I think this time, he's going to talk more about how these broad cortical rhythms, these local field potentials, are superimposed on the local circuitry to enhance cognitive capabilities. So that's, I think, more his new work. So that'll be exciting.
Tara Spires-Jones is at the University of Edinburgh even though she's an American, I think she's doing the best work of anybody on applying really high resolution, sophisticated microscopic techniques to actual human tissue, human post mortem tissue, to get direct insights in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's. And so she's taking methods that I think most people would have thought weren't going to work on post-mortem tissue, but they're working beautifully. And she's focusing on the synapse as the earliest reflection of Alzheimer's pathology. So that'll be our, probably our most translational presentation.
And then Catherine Willie, who has been working on the effects of estradiol on hippocampal circuitry for over 30 years, turned her attention more recently to sex differences in the brain. What I think she'll probably talk about, is that we there's all kinds of controversies about sex differences when you. Look at the size of brain regions or the intensity of a given circuit, etc. And what her recent data show is that that in many respects, is missing the boat, that the real profound sex differences in the brain are at the molecular level and at the level of, for instance, how different circuits respond to neurotransmitters or hormones, and these can be really profound differences that, as she'll say, will have implications for drug development, because all of our drug targets are at the molecular level, and most of them are at the synaptic level. So I'm very eager to hear that talk.
And then the last one is Rusty Gage, who's a longtime hero of mine. He was one of the first people I met in neuroscience when I was an undergraduate at Hopkins, and he was a graduate student, and he's been working on aging and Alzheimer's for many years now. But what I found, find most interesting about what Rusty will present this is now a lot of pressure from NIH to go toward NAMs , novel alternate methods. Well, Rusty's been doing it for 10 years, and once again, he's ahead in the curve. And so I think he'll present a lot of his new work on using human organoids to understand what's going on at the synaptic level with cognitive aging and also Alzheimer's disease. So they're all very, very rigorous scientists. They do a tremendous job. They will cover a fairly broad spectrum of my interests, and I think that the society's interests. And so I would start there, if I were you, and then there's a bunch of other special lectures. And one of the things I noticed is that, you know, I've been pushing this concept of translational basic science for a long time, getting basic scientists to pay attention to health and disease. And if you look at the special lectures throughout the meeting, more than half of them are really turning powerful basic science methodology to issues around disease, and so I'm very pleased to see that.
Vivien
Why do you think there is this hesitation? I mean, I know enough basic neuroscientists who kind of say, ‘Yes, I want to help patients, but not me.’ I want my work. So how do you and connected to that? You know, you've got this big tent. Matt will recognize this question, but I ask this every year, because you have neurologists, people who are only maybe in the clinic, and then you've got people who are thinking about C. elegans nervous system. So you've got people, you know, in the tent and who maybe mix and mingle.
John Morrison [9:40]
Yeah, well, that's the beauty of the meeting. It's the ultimate big tent. And while many of us are actually trained as neuroscientists or neurologists or psychiatrists or neurosurgeons, we come together at this giant meeting. And I think, I think this sort of anxiety, or maybe even tension about I'm a basic scientist, I shouldn't be dealing with disease has really, has really largely gone away over the last 10 years or 15 years, and I'm very happy to see that, because, and what I'm about to say is often viewed as controversial. I think whether we're working on C. elegans or, in my case, the monkey model, you have to have an eye toward how your work relates to human health. And I think we're seeing that. I think we're seeing the maturation of neuroscience. When I my first meeting was 1976 and it was, I guess, a couple of 1000 people, and it was all basic neuroscience. And it was all basic neuroscience in 1986 and what you've seen now is not only more clinician scientists involved in the meeting, but teams that have engineers, computer scientists, neurologists, cellular neurobiologists, physicians, teams converging on an issue that is central to human health, and one of the great examples of that is the brain-computer interface that always involves a large team, and always involves people from systems neuroscientists to physicists. And I think that's the beauty of the meeting. I think that's the beauty of the maturation of our field.
I just wanted to pick up on your last statement like that. It's the maturation of neuroscience field. So what shall we look forward in the next five to 10 years? What's the mature stage of neuroscience for you?
Vivien
Oh, and just briefly, Elisa, because it might be audio. Can you introduce yourself? I'm sorry to be boorish. Oh, sure. Sorry.
Elisa Floridiaa
I'm Elisa. Senior editor in Nature Communications in the neuroscience team.
John Morrison [12:00]
Sorry, yeah, I would pick, I think the future, in general, is this success in translational basic science, translational basic neuroscience, applying this huge army of people trained as basic scientists, basic neuroscientists, to issues around health, disease and actually making significant progress. You know, we haven't. Neuroscience has not made a lot of progress in terms of the major brain disorders in the last 50 years, but I think that's going to change, and I think the brain computer interface will change that you're seeing now people with ALS speaking through the conversion of their thought patterns to words on the computer screen, you're seeing retinal implants that are allowing people with age related macular degeneration to actually see. Obviously, Parkinson's disease is now treated in 10s of 1000s of people. That's the earliest great success story with deep brain stimulation. I think my personal shift in attention over the last five years is toward the interface between infectious disease and neuroscience. I think this is going to be an exploding area, this notion that we're going to experience more pandemics, this notion that infectious disease is probably the single biggest health issue that the world faces, and it gets into the brain, and it gets into the brain with a vengeance. And I believe that the neurodegenerative disorders probably can be initiated by a viral invasion of the brain, and I think we're going to see that as we follow long covid into the future. So those are some of the areas that that I'm most excited about.
Elisa Floridiaa
So we are looking forward for treatments.
John Morrison
Well, okay, so treatment moves out of our hands into biotech and pharma and so I'm really glad that you brought that up. We can't I as interested as I am in translational work around Alzheimer's and aging. I am not going to be the person that makes that final step toward treatment that's going to be biotech or pharma, but what I can do is work much more closely with them than than I have in the past, or than many neuroscientists have in the fence, and this may be an important offshoot of some of the pressure that we're seeing right now, a very, very negative pressure that we're seeing right now on federal funding for research
Vivien
Yes, I meant to ask you, how, what did I learn at the Human Genetics meeting, How are you really to ask people, How are you really, which is, you know, it's, it's very hard for for you all, particularly in the US.
John Morrison [15:05]
Yeah, it's, it's, it's brutal. It's something we never anticipated and we've never experienced before. The federal government has funded basic science essentially since World War Two, and it was very intentional. This was something that was developed by a guy named Vannevar Bush in response to FDR's four questions to him, and he laid the entire groundwork for this. And we followed it for 75 years, and we've become very dependent on it as universities and as researchers, but it's also delivered enormous benefits to our society and our and our economy and our health. So it's being disrupted, and it's fundamentally being disrupted, and I'm not sure what where we go on that one thing is we, maybe we've become too dependent on federal funding, and that's what I was getting at earlier. When we want to move to treatments, we are going to have to work more closely with pharma. Pharma is not going to do the basic science and philanthropy is nowhere near enough money, so we're going to have to figure out how best to continue federal funding and basic science, but also find alternatives. The thing that worries me the most is the impact this is having on our trainees. You can disrupt scientific progress for decades, in a year or two, if you disrupt the training of the next generation. And that's happening.
Shari Wiseman [16:40]
Sorry to interrupt. Shari Wiseman, Chief Editor Nature Neuroscience, so I was wondering how, as particularly as a US-based society. I mean, I know that the society was representing, you know, neuroscientists internationally. I wanted to know what the society is doing to advocate for science in the US, what kinds of lobbying or other activities, is the society engaged in to try to communicate with our government?
John Morrison
Well, we're constantly in communication with the people that we have access to in the government. We also are encouraging our members to be very active, particularly at the local level. I find this really critically important to get out to your community and explain to them how science is funded. They don't know. They have no idea how science is fun. Science is funded at UC Davis, they think that it's funded by the state, probably, or philanthropy, because they don't realize there's hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from NIH, and that's how we do our work or NSF. So you have to get out locally. You have to get out to the politicians, find the champions, the potential champions, and we have to, we have to work with our partners. And I think it's particularly important to work with our clinical partners. This goes back to what we were talking about a little earlier, we need to partner with them for many reasons. One is that they treat the patients and have the familiarity with the diseases. But also, we need to make it clear that the basic science is funded by NIH and NSF drives the treatment of patients, and this is another issue that our public doesn't necessarily understand. So we need to do a much, much better job of communicating what we do and why it's important for them to support it and fund it as taxpayers.
Vivien
I mean, I guess they don't understand all the details, but they certainly are fearful of certain types of disorders and diseases, as pregnant people, as elderly people, as someone with a traumatic brain injury. So I would say the interest level is probably very high, right?
John Morrison
It's extremely high. And every time I give a talk to like the Rotary Club or something like that, the room is always packed. There's always a ton of questions. People are interested in both. They're interested in interested in brain diseases, because they all know people that have them, and they're interested in how the brain works. So we have a, we have a great opportunity. You know, I need no disrespect to people that study the liver, but we're studying the brain.
Elisa Floridiaa
Yeah, and SfN has a very strong SfN chapters.
Joh Morrison
So the chapters are an interesting issue Elisa they some of them are very strong, and some of them have have atrophied to some degree. And we'd like to get those going again, because you're 100% right.
Vivien
And just to explain, chapters are regional groups, or groups of particular academics at particular universities, or a little
John Morrison
A little bit of both, but really regional, like, there'll be a San Diego chapter, there'll be a Davis chapter, there'll be a chapter, some in Iowa, a chapter in New Orleans. And some of these are quite active, and some of these aren't, but they are a potential mechanism to get to the local population.
Vivien
Of course, there are on the other end of the spectrum. There are companies who are, for example, offering directed consumer sorts of tests, for example, for Alzheimer's. And then there are the, let's just call it confusing, notices about what causes autism and what doesn't. What is it like? You know, in the neuroscience community, and to you personally, to see these things that might not be quite under, you know, the control of academic scientists, right? They just kind of happen.
John Morrison [2045]
It's hugely frustrating. It's the most frustrating thing that I've ever endured as a scientist and my clinical colleagues are probably even more frustrated, because somebody in the administration will make one of these outlandish claims, and the next day they're dealing with their patients, and their patients are saying, well, what am I supposed to do? You know, pregnant women, this is, this is really incredibly unfortunate. And from the perspective of a scientist, I need to get out there and explain the science behind it. From the perspective of a clinician, you need to be able to deal with your your patients, questions. And we have a webinar coming up Thursday with the American Academy of Neurology, sponsor, co sponsored by us and the American Academy of Neurology. We will the two presidents of those two societies will speak, and we will make precisely these points. Autism has become extraordinarily confusing and the research arena has made. Great strides. So I guess we just need to, you know, get up earlier and work harder to get the message out there. And we need to work with our clinical colleagues as well, because in a lot of cases, they can benefit from our scientific knowledge, and we can certainly benefit from their clinical knowledge.
Vivien
I saw that one of the press conferences is moderated by Dr Holden Thorpe, who himself has talked about his own autism. So that's going to be a really interesting session, for sure. Yeah, I wanted to return, if I may, to the trainees that you mentioned and the people you're influencing and the people you have mentored and are mentoring. Now I know that in your introduction to the SfN booklet, you talk about this is a week where you might all of a sudden switch gears in your career, but you might also start a collaboration. What are you experiencing in your own lab and in your own circle with trainees? I know that it's a period of deep uncertainty, but people want to finish their PhDs, postdocs and, you know, land a faculty post if they can.
John Morrison [23:00]
Yeah, I'm experiencing it very directly. The two most senior people in my lab are from Brazil, and they were educated in Brazil. One of them was also educated to some degree in Europe, and they want the great opportunity to become an academic scientist in America. That's what their dream has been. And one of them is going to miss the neuroscience meeting because she has to do a tour of Europe, because she's decided that it's much more likely that she'll get an opportunity in Europe. So, and she's just in my lab. This is going on all over the country.
Vivien
What stage is she in? Is she, oh, she's looking for a faculty post, or she's
John Morrison
Basically junior faculty, but not tenure track faculty. And so she's spectacular. They both are spectacular. I've had the great fortune of having extraordinary trainees for my whole career, but the international trainees are under incredible duress. They worry about whether they'll get back into the country. I mean, think about that. And then the domestic trainees have a similar lack of faith in the system currently, and a similar concern for whether or not they've they're ever going to get the chance to be a a basic scientist, which has been their dream for the most part, since they were children. And so it's really hard to express how frustrating it is to be part of that. You know, I'm at the end of my career, and I've had a great career and tremendous opportunities. I've been trained by the very best neuroscientists in the world. I worry. I don't worry about me or even people younger than me. I worry about the young people. And the future of neuroscience in the United States is that it's that level
Vivien
I saw that you have, I mean, you always have them. I've attended a few the Career Development Workshops. They're probably going to be maybe even more full than they were in previous years. But there seems to be a lot of guidance opportunities that you I don't know if you got more job ads, you know, for that one section where there are job listings and things like that, did you Is there an increase or maybe even a decrease? Because people like your Brazilian mentee are saying, Hmm, maybe not here,
John Morrison
Yeah, Melissa may be able to speak to that more directly. Oone of the things that we have to do is we have to present opportunities to our trainees that are outside of academia, and there are all kinds of people from pharma and biotech that are very willing to talk to our trainees and very willing to help them move in that direction. Now, of course, they're not expanding right now either, so for some of the same reasons. So that is not a readily available option. But there's also things, you know, neuroscientists go to Wall Street. It isn't necessarily but what the people in my lab envision for themselves. But there are lots of opportunities that outside of academia, and we need to do a better job of bringing people in that are familiar with those opportunities, because we tend to, we tend to clone ourselves, and that's not the right thing for us to do.
Matt Windsor
I want to just welcome Emilie Marcus to the conversation. Emilie is our chair-elect of our Public Education and Communication Committee. She was directly involved with picking our press conferences. She may be better positioned answer any specific of those questions.
John
Yeah, Emilie do you want to review the press conferences.
Emilie Marcus [26:55]
Sure, absolutely. Hi everybody. Apologies for being late. No worries again. I don't know if I should start. Do you have questions about are there some of the press conferences that are particularly of interest to you that I could answer questions about?
Vivien
Or, well, it's always interesting to hear how you pick them, and you know, what kind of trends you're seeing in terms of, you know, importance, obviously. GLP-1 is a topic, and a number of other things that you chose. I'm just kind of curious why you chose those. And my colleague from Scientific American will be seeing and hearing this recording too, but she's actually not here right now. I'm sorry
Emilie Marcus
It's a very interesting process of choosing the press topics, and it's a big group that weighs in and contributes ideas to what should be on the press conference. I'd say press conferences. I'd say overall, there's a sort of combination of factors. Some are obviously targeted at questions that are quite timely. They are really important right now. And obviously the autism one is an example of one of those like that is majorly important to get accurate information out around autism in November of 2025 there are some where it's just a field that has really cracked open recently, and so there's a lot of new, exciting things to get out and then there are some, and again, these are the ones I talk about, just because they're where my sort of strategic viewpoint sits.
It will have exploded in five to seven years from now, and sort of right now might be, you know, incubating or sort of nascent, but really is at that crest, can we can see that it's, it's going to break open wildly, and so that hopefully, as you know, people reporting on what's coming out of the neuroscience meeting and where neuroscience is this year, you can get some flavor of that full range of what's pressing, what is really exciting, in terms of recent breakthroughs, and then what do we have to look forward to is really the big topics coming down the road. So on that latter piece of what's coming down the road, the two that you know I am particularly interested in and they are interrelated.
One is on artificial intelligence, AI and the impact that it will have in neuroscience, broadly, in every area of neuroscience, from the most basic science of you know, protein folding through to clinical trials and how you assess patient responses to different drugs, AI is going to transform all of that in our science and enable questions that right now we can't even fathom, that we could ask, and we're going to see that over the next it's already starting, but we will see it really, you know, I think in seven years, we'll look back and think, wow, how did we get here? And how did that happen so fast?
And the other is around brain machine interfaces, which is interrelated with AI, but also, again, a little bit different. It's the certainly artificial intelligence will be very important in brain machine interfaces because of the amount of data that have to be analyzed to make naturalistic responses or to interpret sensory input, huge amounts of data to make those accurate and precise. But it's also an interface material science, and what kinds of what are we going to develop as as plantable brain electrodes, or ways to improve that interface? And I think that's an exciting area, again, where there's just a lot of advances.
And, you know, material science is, to me, a super fascinating field as it impacts a lot of things. But so I think, and you know, John, I know, just has talked about the impact that we're seeing already in brain machine interfaces, in vision and in macular degeneration, and ability to help restore people's sight, as you know, for again, the aging population a tremendous concern, and some place where, you know, we're really going to be able to do amazing things for people in those, you know, in those areas. So that's just two. Again, if there's other ones you'd like to hear more about, I'm happy to comment on those as well.
Elisa Floridiaa [31:05]
I actually would like to build on your excitement for brain computer interface. So, yeah, yeah, brain computer interface is exploding. And, you know, different people are coming with different approaches, and, you know, tackling very different diseases or disorders. Do you think that it's time for brain computer interface people to agree on some ethical standards, like, you know, are wearables at clinical trial or are those observational studies? Do you see? Yeah, any need for a bigger conversation on how do we approach brain computer interface?
Well, it's a very good question, and I do think that scientists generally gravitate towards that in any way to sort of develop standards and expectations, whether it's through their collaborations, through publications, etc. So I'm less on the regulatory side and more on the discovery, and it's too early to really start imposing regulations, because we're really at the beginning stages of some of these things. That said it is always a good idea to keep the safety of people in mind and develop some standards and regulation. I just will say it's not what I know about, so I can't really comment on what those would look like, or who would be the relevant parties to establish those kinds of regulations? Obviously, the FDA is going to play some role in establishing regulations for what can be marketed as a brain machine interface, same as they do for all medical devices. But is that the only right place do basic scientists in advance, have to do some as well. Again, I don't know, John, if you have a perspective on regulation and brain machine interfaces,
John Morrison
well, it's a it's a very important question. I think I agree with you. It's probably early in the process of regulatory issues, but it will come and it will be, it will be a tough issue. It's going to take a lot of collaboration between clinicians and scientists to develop guidelines and regulations. I don't want to say much more than that, because I think it's, it's yet to be seen. It's still very, very early, but it's moving very fast, so I think your question is going to become relevant pretty quickly.
Vivien
I just wanted to say hi to Tanya Lewis from Scientific American, who just popped in. Thank you. I know you've been chasing another session.
John Morrison
I did want to just add one thing to Emilie's comments on the on the press conferences. I was speaking earlier about the maturation of neuroscience and this application of basic translational basic science. And you see that in the press conferences, these are largely basic scientists presenting their basic work, but they're obviously linking it to important health issues and brain disorders. I don't think you would have seen that as dominant in the press conferences 15 or 20 years ago, right?
Vivien
I saw there's one on early detection and Alzheimer's. So I guess you know, you are picking up on things that are out there. One aspect of about the brain that I've always found interesting, and I know you have some talks on this, is the plasticity of the brain. And I guess it's kind of fun to think about. You know how plastic the brain is? I know you've worked on this a lot. Dr Morrison, I mean, do animal models show this plasticity? And how is it? Is it easy to model?
John Morrison [34:55]
So plasticity is apparent. In fact, some of the best early work on plasticity was from Eric Kandel's lab in Aplysia. So plasticity exists wherever you have a nervous system, largely because it's so central to learning and memory and primitive, primitive organisms, well, I shouldn't even use that term, but organisms that have a less developed nervous system than us, they are not primitive. They are fine. Upstanding organisms have plasticity and they have learning. We've been able to study plasticity at many, many different levels. What has always faceted, it fascinated me about it is the interface between the structure of a synapse and the molecular underpinnings of a synapse. And what this notion of a thin spine which is very tied to learning, versus a mushroom spine which is very stable. And so you see this in aging. You see the loss of the spines that are super plastic, that are required for learning new things, and the stability of the spines that code expertise. And people can see this in their in their daily lives. You know you can still play the piano perfectly when you're 85 but you may not know which room your piano is in, so or you may forget which room it's in, so that I've approached it from the perspective of aging and the perspectives of stress, but it's probably the single most central issue to to the function of neurons, the fact that they're not they're not written in stone, that they can modify their circuitry, and I envision important synaptic proteins like Luna may receptors literally zipping in and out of the synapse and strengthening and weakening a given synapse. So I've always been fascinated by it. Yeah, I think it's central to virtually everything we do now. You've got microglia involved in regulating plasticity so and then the developing brain is hugely plastic, and it's incredibly important to end up with an adult brain. What I like from the perspective of aging is that you keep plasticity. You really do, and hormones like estradiol promote plasticity, and so you don't as you age, and maybe you have some memory issues, it isn't that you no longer have plasticity you do, but you you struggle with it a little bit more, and those circuits and those molecular systems that underlie plasticity do suffer some with aging, so we have to find ways to keep them healthy.
Tanya Lewis
Apologies, I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm a Senior Health desk editor for Scientific American one of my colleagues, Allison Parshall, she's our neuroscience editor, and she will most likely be attending SfN this year, but she's out today, so I'm kind of here in lieu of her, but I just briefly had a chance to look at the press conference, you know, document that you sent Vivien, so thank you for that looks like some really great talks. And a couple of them really jumped out to me, like the one on mouse midwives. That was really fun, even though I don't cover a ton of mouse research on the human health beat, but I thought it was interesting. And then some of the stuff on. GLP-1 drugs and side effects was also kind of interesting to me, so I'd love to hear more about those, but doesn't have to be right now.
John Morrison
Emilie, do you want to take them?
Emilie Marcus
I will say those are, unfortunately, I don't know. Matt, if you have any, there are two of the press topics that I know the least about. Well, not so much. The GLP ones, those, I can speak to a little bit as we were having a conversation about what is really new in GLP ones, and what are they? What are we learning about their impact in the brain, and what they specifically do in the brain. They were obviously discovered as metabolic syndrome, you know, in the metabolic pathways, but we are discovering that they have impacts in the brain. Still early days, lots on reward systems and what it means about addiction and, you know, addictive behaviors. And again, we're seeing effects of them in all ranges of addictive behaviors now, I think, but also in, you know, heart function. And I think they in the next five years, we're going to learn a lot more. It's a very important area to know what a lot of these pharmaceuticals, GLP-1s , is a particularly front and center version of a pharmaceutical that we don't know enough about what its effects are in the brain. Generally, if you talk to people in drug development, most drugs, we don't know a lot about what they do in the brain. That's sort of a set aside of you know, there's a side effect that the study of the impact of pharmaceuticals on the brain is one of the least developed aspects, I think, of drug development, at least. That's what I hear from my colleagues in pharma and biotech, that the tests that are used, etc, to detect those things are, which is makes sense, because the drugs are used for other capacities. But we really do need to know a lot more about how pharmaceuticals, in general, impact the brain. GLP-1 being a very timely one, and it will teach us things about the role of the brain in brain-body interactions as dawn was saying in earlier discussion about if you're taking you talk to people who are on GLP-1s, the their primary sort of characteristic is that they're just not that interested in food anymore. It's not that they're not hungry. It's not that they, you know, have it's that their cognitive state around drive for an interest in food has been reduced, and how that's happening, and what that says about those how the brain controls our drive for food, etc, is, I think, a really exciting area, the mouse Midwifery, one I have to say, I just don't know that much about I don't know, Matt, if you have heard more insight into
Vivien
she can follow up on that, or your colleague, Tanya, can follow up on that, or attend it. And then you'll know for sure. No worries,
Matt Windsor
These are all live streamed at the meeting, so Tanya, we'll see you watching live.
Vivien
One thing, and I know we should wrap up, but one thing I wanted to return to the trainees and the mentoring relationship. I know that you. Dr Morrison, lost your mentor. Dr Bloom earlier this year, and I just wondering, sort of also in this age where mentoring is taking on a really difficult role because of the difficult times, at least in the US that neuroscientists are facing. What was it like for you? I know you've written also in the course of the Life of the neuron exhibits that are just wonderful. What it's like to work with mentees. Do you have anything that you'd like to deposit on that?
John Morrison [42:05]
It's the best part of being a scientist. It's just flat out the best. I mean, nobody's going to remember a grant you had, and hopefully they'll remember a couple of your papers, but your family tree is forever, and it continues forever. And there's nothing more important than we that we do. It's incredibly rewarding. One of the nice things about being president is I get to have an evening session with my lab. Well, what I did is I converted it into a lab reunion, and so I'll be seeing and I see them every year at the meeting. And you know, some of them are department chairs, some of them are deans, some of them are younger than that and less senior than that. But I follow my mentees very, very closely.
Vivien
And just, I mean not to be harp on numbers all the time, but how many people will be attend, or how many people have attended in the past? How many
John Morrison
Have attended when we have a like a lab reunion?
Vivien
Yeah, your reunion? Yes, oh, it might be more than three,
John Morrison
Yeah, sometimes as many as 20. I think we'll have more than that this time it's and of course, I came from a lab. I assembled the bloom family tree with help from a lot of other people for a meeting, and I think it was 2005 and there was three or four generations, and there was hundreds and hundreds of people, and every single person on that bloom family tree that I spoke to was fiercely proud to be, to be on that tree, to have their name there and be associated with Floyd. So it's, I don't think there's anything else that we do that's as important.
Emilie Marcus
And I just want to layer in again, something I personally worry about is maintaining that aspect of scientific research going forward in new generations, and that both that pride, that connection, that family feeling that, you know, I certainly grew up with in science, as John mentioned, you know, Eric Candell, I started my PhD was in plasticity and apology, and that, I mean, Eric Kandel has a very big family tree, And I did also create one way back when, which is now, you know, a speck in his family tree, back when I created it. But how we think about preserving that, building that and continue, because it is such an important part of both the progress of science, the rigor of science is that those things that, you know, we might take for granted in terms of the team aspect of it and the interaction aspect. So how do we continue to maintain that environment as things change? I mean, you know, covid obviously impacted a lot in that way. People spread to all over the place and had to learn how to interact differently. So it won't without some concentrated effort, I think we won't necessarily be able to keep that, that spirit, which is so to me, integral to neuroscience. One of the things I love about the meeting, I mean, I went to my first meeting as a first out of college in 1983 so it was the meeting in Boston back in 1983 and the meeting itself reflects that which I find. I mean, I've worked now in biomedical research areas across the board. So special about neuroscience is there, and it's supported by the meeting because it's such a broad, inclusive meeting that it's you can really go and feel part of a huge community. So how do we preserve that during the young people coming in?
Vivien
Thank you so much for taking the time for and if there's anything else you want to shove at us about the meeting or about neuroscience, please do. And yes, I would, I would like to try to link in the blog post to life of the neuron, which is fabulous, this this art, this building of art and neuroscience is
John Morrison
Fabulous. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it up. It's my favorite thing, other than my actual science that I've ever done.
Vivien
Is there a remake, or is there, is it still,
John Morrison
You know, we're still, obviously, it was, was tremendously interrupted by the pandemic, but we are trying to figure out in the next target city, and it will it will exist again.
Vivien
Fabulous. Well, thank you everyone for your time and for your contributions and thinking together, always great. And thank you Matt for the privilege of being able to do this. I will keep you posted.
John Morrison
And thanks for everything you guys do, for absolutely publicizing what we what we do.
Emilie Marcus
It's very important having excitement around neuroscience. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you for that.
Vivien
Alright. Take care, everyone. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye, bye.
That was Conversations with scientists. Today’s episode was a sneak peak of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience SfN. Today’s guests were Dr John Morrison from the University of California Davis who is President of SfN, Dr Emilie Marcus from UCLA, who is chair of the Public Education and Communication Committee of the Society for Neuroscience and you heard from Melissa Thompson, chief of staff and senior director of digital strategy and communication and Matt Windsor who manages media, outreach and communications at SfN.
You also heard from Dr Elisa Floridiaa from Nature Communications, Dr. Shari Wiseman chief editor of Nature Neuroscience, Tanya Lewis from Scientific American. and I wanted to say thank you very much to the Society for Neuroscience communications team, who helped make this conversation happen.
The music in this podcast is Yestalgia by Hope Street, licensed from artist.io. And I just wanted to say because there's confusion about these things, sometimes nobody paid to be in this podcast, nobody external paid for this podcast. This is independent journalism that I produce in my livingroom. I'm Vivien Marx, thanks for listening.
(DigitalVision/ Punchstock)