BCB Lab at COSYNE 2019 conference
Ainhoa, Genís and I. There we were the three of us, at Lisbon, in one of the world’s top conferences in computational neuroscience, ready to present only three of the many research projects currently being developed in the Lab.
How did we get in?
Well, as for Genís and me, the “soft threshold criterion” in abstract selection provided us the chance to explain our work in Cosyne, and gave us a place in the poster sessions. On the other hand, and despite the ~70% rejection rate, not only was Ainhoa’s abstract accepted in Cosyne, but it was also one of the few works chosen for a short oral presentation!
Ainhoa presenting her research to the audience of Cosyne2019.
Her amazing effort to synthetize 7 years of tireless research in a ten-minute presentation paid off. The audience was offered a fast yet deep glance on her solid and exciting results in decision-making with rats: expectations build-up under congruent trial history; expectations reset after an error trial; expectations rebound after a (post-error) correct trial; and clear neural correlates found in the striatum for all of the above.
Afterwards, several people approached Ainhoa to both congratulate her for her presentation and discuss the thrilling topic of the talk. And, in summary, we had the general feeling that Ainhoa’s work was provided a very positive feedback from the community, which boosted even more her motivation in the project.
Regarding the poster sessions, although Genís and I presented our respective work in different days, in both cases we got immersed in stimulating and productive discussions, met motivated people with similar research interests, and paved the way for possible future collaborations (which was very exciting, even while feeling a strong, dinner-time hunger due to the poster session’s schedule).
All in all, the Cosyne2019 conference was a great opportunity to present some of the work that we and our colleagues carry on at de la Rocha Lab. Furthermore, it was a good way to strengthen bounds with the computational neuroscience community, and finally a nice chance to learn from experienced scientists in our field.
To finish this post, let me underline that the Cosyne experience didn’t end in Portugal, since Genís presented three Cosyne posters as a follow-up in a recent lab meeting. However, that’s another story, for another post, in de la Brain Circuits and Behavior Lab’s website…
- Lluís Hernández-Navarro