Tag: symposium

CNS wrap-up

I’m back from CNS in Montreal (actually, I’m not quite back; I’m in Ottawa for a few days–but close enough). Some thoughts about the experience, in no particular order, and with very little sense:

  • A huge number of registered attendees (basically, everyone from Europe who didn’t leave for Montreal early) couldn’t make it to the meeting because of that evil, evil Icelandic volcano. As a result, large swaths of posterboard were left blank–or would have been left blank, if not for the clever “Holy Smokes! So-and-so can’t be here…” notes taped to them. So that was really too bad; aside from the fact that the Europeans missed out on the meeting, which kind of sucks, there was a fair amount of chaos during the slide and symposium sessions as speakers were randomly shuffled around. I guess it’s a testament to the organizers that the conference went off relatively smoothly despite the loss of a large chunk of the attendance.
  • The symposium I chaired went well, as far as I can tell. Which is to say, no one streaked naked through the hall, no one went grossly over time, the audience hall was full, and the three talks I got to watch from the audience were all great. I think my talk went well too, but it’s harder to say. In theory, you should be able to tell how these things go based on the ratio of positive to negative feedback you get. But since people generally won’t tell you if they thought your talk sucked, you’re usually stuck trying to determine whether people are giving you well-I-didn’t-really-like-it-but-I-don’t-want-you-to-feel-bad compliments, or I-really-liked-it-and-I’m-not-even-lying-to-your-face compliments. In any case, good or bad reception, I think the topic is a really important one, and I’m glad the symposium was well attended.
  • I love Montreal. As far as I’m concerned they could have CNS in Montreal every year and I wouldn’t complain. Well, maybe I’d complain a little. But only about unimportant things like the interior decoration of the hotel lobby.
  • Speaking of which, I liked the Hilton Bonaventure and all, but the place did remind me a lot of a 70s porn set. All it’s missing are some giant ferns in the lobby and a table lined with cocaine next to the elevators. (You can probably tell that my knowledge of 70s porn is based entirely on watching two-thirds of Boogie Nights once). Also, what the hell is on floors 2 through 12 of Place Bonaventure? And how can a hotel have nearly 400 rooms, all on the same (13th) floor!?
  • That Vietnamese place we had lunch at on Tuesday, which apparently just opened up, isn’t going to last long. When someone asks you for “brown rice”, they don’t mean “white rice with some red food dye stirred in”.
  • Apparently, Mike X. Cohen is not only the most productive man in cognitive neuroscience, but also a master of the neuroimaging haiku (admittedly, a niche specialty).
  • Sushi and baklava at a conference reception? Yes please!
  • The MDRS party on Monday night was a lot of fun, though the downstairs room at the bar was double-booked. I’m sure the 20-odd people at salsa dancing night were a bit surprised, and probably not entirely appreciative, when 100 or so drunken neuroscientists collectively stumbled downstairs for a free drink, hung out for fifteen minutes, then disappeared upstairs again. Other than that–and the $8 beers–a good time was had.
  • Turns out that assortment of vegetables that Afghans call an Afghan salad is exactly what Turks call a Turkish salad and Israelis call an Israeli salad. I guess I’m not surprised that everyone in that part of the world uses the same four or five ingredients in their salad, but let’s not all rush to take credit for what is basically some cucumber, tomato, and parsley in a bowl. That aside, dinner was awesome. And I wish there were more cities full of restaurants that let you bring your own wine.

  • The talks and posters were great this year. ALL OF THEM. If I had to pick favorites, I guess I really liked the symposium on perceptual decision-making, and several of the posters in the reward/motivation session on Sunday or Monday afternoon. But really, ALL OF THEM WERE GREAT. So let’s all give ourselves giant gold medals with pictures of brains on them. And then… let’s melt down those medals, sell the gold, and buy some scanners with the money.

building a cumulative science of human brain function at CNS

Earlier today, I received an email saying that a symposium I submitted for the next CNS meeting was accepted for inclusion in the program. I’m pretty excited about this; I think the topic of the symposium is a really important one, and this will be a great venue to discuss some of the relevant issues. The symposium is titled “Toward a cumulative science of human brain function”, which is a pretty good description of its contents. Actually, I stole borrowed that title from one of the other speakers (Tor Wager); originally, the symposium was going to be called something like “Cognitive Neuroscience would Suck Less if we all Pooled our Findings Together Instead of Each Doing our own Thing.” In hindsight, I think title theft was the right course of action.  Anyway, with the exception of my own talk, which is assured of being perfectly mediocre, the line-up is really stellar; the other speakers are David Van Essen, Tor Wager (my current post-doc advisor), and Russ Poldrack, all of whom do absolutely fantastic research, and give great talks to boot. Here’s the symposium abstract:

This symposium is designed to promote development of a cumulative science of human brain function that advances knowledge through formal synthesis of the rapidly growing functional neuroimaging literature. The first speaker (Tal Yarkoni) will motivate the need for a cumulative approach by highlighting several limitations of individual studies that can only be overcome by synthesizing the results of multiple studies. The second speaker (David Van Essen) will discuss the basic tools required in order to support formal synthesis of multiple studies, focusing particular attention on SumsDB, a massive database of functional neuroimaging data that can support sophisticated search and visualization queries. The third and fourth speakers will discuss two different approaches to combining and filtering results from multiple studies. Tor Wager will review state-of-the-art approaches to meta-analysis of fMRI data, providing empirical examples of the power of meta-analysis to both validate and disconfirm widely held views of brain organization. Russell Poldrack will discuss a novel taxonomic approach that uses collaboratively annotated meta-data to develop formal ontologies of brain function. Collectively, these four complementary talks will familiarize the audience with (a) the importance of adopting cumulative approaches to functional neuroimaging data; (b) currently available tools for accessing and retrieving information from multiple studies; and (c) state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing the results of different functional neuroimaging studies into an integrated whole.

Anyway, I think it’ll be a really interesting set of talks, so if you’re at CNS next year, and find yourself hanging around at the convention center for half a day (though why you’d want to do that is beyond me, given that the conference is in MONTREAL), please check it out!