The 2009 Annual Meeting of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience took place on Saturday March 14th 2009 at the University of Fribourg.
Our past year’s annual meeting featured a new format, including two plenary lectures by world-renowned experts, a data blitz session for graduate and postdoctoral students’ presentations, the traditional poster session and three parallel specialized symposiums that covered the breadth of neuroscience research conducted in Switzerland.
The morning plenary lecture was given by Professor Roger Lemon, Director of the Institute of Neurology at University College in London. Dr. Lemon discussed his work with experimental primates and humans on the control of skilled hand movements by the brain, and how this fundamental knowledge can be applied to facilitate treatment and recovery following stroke or spinal injury in humans.
The students’ data blitz session was followed by the poster presentations. 173 posters were presented, and lively discussions during this session were evident. In the afternoon, three specialized symposiums with topics covering fundamental neuroscience, clinical neuroscience and computational neuroscience took place. In retrospective, we are very satisfied that all three symposia had a high attendance, and the feedback was that this new format may be considered to be kept in future.
The afternoon plenary lecture was given by Professor Andrea Volterra, Director of the Department of Cell Biology and Morphology at the University of Lausanne. Dr. Volterra, a pioneer in the study of astrocytes, discussed his work on the role of astrocytes in synaptic transmission, and how fundamental knowledge of the structure and function of these, too often neglected, cells can contribute to our understanding and possible treatment of several brain disorders. Following the success of last year’s meeting in Geneva, we were happy to see around 400 participants at this meeting.
