The second day of CNS 2024 was richly packed with 6 stimulating symposia — on topics ranging from competing neuroscientific theories of consciousness and memory engrams to the influence of dreams on cognition and multisensory development across the lifespan — two poster sessions, an NIH workshop, and the George A. Miller Prize lecture by Lynn […]
Untangling Dreams and Our Waking Lives
CNS 2024 Press Release Sunday, April 14, 2024 – Toronto – “Dreams are messages from the deep.” (Dune Part 1) Musings about dreams abound throughout society, from movies to TV to books. But despite being a constant source of fascination, the role of dreams in our lives still remains elusive. As recently noted in the […]
CNS 2024: Day 1 Highlights
The 31st annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS 2024) kicked off in Toronto with 1,400 participants! Today’s sessions included the Data Blitz session, Poster Session A, and the keynote lecture by Sheena Josselyn (Hospital for Sick Children and The University of Toronto) about research to understand “engrams,” long-lasting physical brain changes that are […]
Diving Deeply into Brain Plasticity Through Work with the Sensorimotor Deprived
CNS 2024 Q&A with Ella Striem-Amit For the last two decades, Ella Striem-Amit has been searching for answers to some of neuroscience’s deepest questions: How does the human brain develop in individuals and what happens when something is missing? Working with people born without hands, sight, or hearing has given her and her team new […]
Great Expectations: How Our Prior Experiences Shape Our Reality
CNS 2024 Q&A with Peter Kok From daily illusions like seeing animal shapes in clouds or mistaking a curtain for a person in a dark bedroom to more complex ones, like the “hollow mask illusion,” (screenshot at right/above) our prior experiences and expectations shape how we perceive the world around us, sometimes in unexpected ways. […]
Watching a Memory Unfold
CNS 2024 Q&A with Sheena Josselyn For the past few decades, Sheena Josselyn has had a ringside seat to some remarkable technological advancements that have enabled scientists to study memories in ways once only imaginable through science fiction. Viral vectors, optogenetics, and live imaging have all enabled neuroscientists like Josselyn to explore how cells activate […]
Bringing New Focus to the Mind
CNS 2024 Q&A with Kia Nobre For Kia Nobre, the drive toward science is instinctive. For as long as she can remember, she has been curious about the world around her. “I like to think that all humans start out that way, curious, perplexed even,” says Nobre of Yale University. “I don’t understand why or […]
Mapping Paths to Understand the Hippocampus
Q&A with Lynn Nadel Over the last several decades, research led by cognitive neuroscientists has led to new understanding of the hippocampus and its core role in human memory. “The attention the hippocampus has received, and the progress that has been made in understanding it, has been nothing short of astounding in the 50+ years […]
Training Your Attention on Unwanted Thoughts to Remove Them
Zulkayda Mamat has always been interested in the interplay between memory and trauma. Ethnically Uyghur, Mamat left China when she was 12 years old, becoming part of the diaspora community. She has borne witness to the mass trauma experienced by the Uyghurs, at least a million of whom, by many estimates, have been detained in […]
When Our Brains Trick Us with a False Memory
When I was very young, my family visited Disney World, and for years after, I had a fairly vivid memory of the Dumbo ride: the elephants spun around vertically like a Ferris wheel. When I returned there decades later as an adult with my own family, I was stunned to see that the elephants spin […]
