Talk by Katharina Bögl & Sandra Naumann, Scholar Minds

Although many academics love their research and experience fulfilment from various tasks of their profession, mounting evidence suggests that working in academia might contribute to mental health problems. We at Scholar Minds, a group of early-career researchers (ECRs) of Berlin’s universities and research institutions, strive to ensure the mental health of Berlin’s early career researchers by improving the status-quo on an individual and institutional level. Based on our Scholar Minds surveys, we will first provide an overview of ECRs’ current mental health status. Secondly, we want to unravel unhelpful thoughts and habits which ultimately impact ECRs’ mental health and show how to build helpful habits to overcome challenging times.

The Corpus Curiosum series was produced with the support of FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

Are you a Master or PhD student located in Europe? Do you know about the NENS Exchange Grants? This funding opportunity of EUR 3,000 allows you to spend 1 to 3 months in another European lab to learn a new technique. Learn everything you need to know by watching this flash webinar. Organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET).

Special interest event organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET) at FENS Forum 2020.

Thousands of non-coding (nc)RNAs have been identified with functions in processes, such as translation regulation and RNA processing. Different classes of ncRNAs exist, including microRNAs, circRNAs and tRNAs, some of which are enriched in the nervous system and neural cells. This webinar discusses some of the functions of these ncRNAs in the developing and adult brain and highlights how their deregulation contributes to brain trauma and disease. Webinar organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET) on the SfN digital platform, Neuronline.

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

The blood-brain barriers are of great relevance in maintaining central nervous system (CNS) immune privilege and for the regulation of peripheral immunocytes trafficking within the brain. Anomalous brain-immune system crosstalk is acknowledged across neurodegenerative disorders, characterised by chronic infiltration of peripheral immunocytes within the CNS and neuroinflammation, eventually leading to neurodegeneration.

To gain a deeper understanding, FENS presents this unique opportunity to explore the world of neurodegenerative disorders and brain barriers pathology with esteemed speakers.

Webinar organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET).

Article by Alicia Puscian, Kevin Kenna, Marina Vidaki.

In this article, we’ll share cultural themes that arose among our personal experiences moving from Europe to the United States. Our intent is to empower you to make a more informed choice about where to take this next step in your career.

Material produced under the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET) umbrella, published on Neuronline.

The first FENS-EPA webinar aims to understand the present indications of psychedelics, and compare their chances of success (effect-size) in the different indications.

The overall environment where patients receive psychedelics is allegedly extremely important, with many possibilities of personalisation: music, paintings, low intensity lights, or the presence of a psychotherapist during the session.

Beyond anecdotal experiences, the science behind such proposals and the level of medical evidence supporting these aspects are relatively weak and need more clear descriptions.

Psychedelics have now been tested (usually successfully) in a broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder and resistant depression, anorexia nervosa, OCD, PTSD or alcohol use disorder. This makes it difficult to understand what the real psychiatric target of these drugs is.

What is psychedelic microdosing and why are people doing it? Where does all the hype about it come from and most importantly, does it actually work? So many questions that currently remain unanswered.

Highlights of the difficulties shared among all PhD students while discussing personalized strategies and coping mechanisms to deal with adversity (EJN article)

Psychiatric disorders have a complex etiology that involves an interaction among genetic and environmental factors. Among environmental factors linked to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders is the use of cannabinoids, which poses a major psychiatric risk when performed during adolescence, a critical phase of neurodevelopment where specific neuroplastic changes occur that determine later brain function. In particular, the prefrontal cortex, which regulates many superior brain functions, matures during adolescence, and disruption of this process may eventually deteriorate several high-order brain domains (i.e., cognition, emotionality, processing of stimuli) and favor the onset of psychiatric disorders. The link between cannabinoid use and increased risk of psychiatric disorders is evident in users of Cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids. Synthetic cannabinoids seem to induce more severe psychiatric symptoms than natural cannabinoids and may either exacerbate existing psychoses or trigger new-onset psychoses, most likely because they act as full cannabinoid receptor agonists. Thus, natural and synthetic cannabinoids robustly affect dopamine and aminoacidergic neurotransmission impacting the development of cortical trajectories and functions. Recently, further concern on the risk of psychiatric disorders linked to cannabinoids use comes from the increasing popularity of vaping synthetic cannabinoids by means of e-cigarette devices, especially among youngsters. E-cigarettes containing cannabinoids are available in the market, but the effect of cannabinoids vaping on the brain are ill defined.

Webinar organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training on the SfN digital platform, Neuronline.

The FENS Committee on Higher Education and Training (CHET) and the SfN Neuroscience Training Committee (NTC) are working closely together to exchange in-depth information, share tools, and develop coordinated training activities for their members.

A webinar focusing on topics relevant for senior postdocs and newly appointed PIs who want to start their own lab. Organised by the FKNE and the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET) at FENS Forum 2018.

Organised by the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence (FKNE) and hosted by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET), the event focus on topics relevant for senior postdocs, newly appointed and mid-carrier PIs. The approached themes include: how to get a first PI position, selection of team members, application and management of funds, the mid-career gap, early and mid-career mobility, and coping with stress while balancing life with career.

Neuroscience is an exciting and vibrant field, but building an academic career is not always easy. What are critical success indicators? Which tools help talented young neuroscientists conquer the challenges? In this NeuroView, we discuss instruments and steps that can help people progress through the ranks.

Talk by Dr Javier de Felipe, Polytechnic University of Madrid

The appearance, expansion and differentiation of a highly complex multi-laminated cortex, the “neocortex” is a fundamental event during the evolution of the mammalian telencephalon. This cortical region is the most human part of the nervous system because it is the brain structure whose activity is directly related to the emergence of those capacities that distinguish humans from other mammals. Thanks to the neocortex we can perform such extraordinary and highly complex tasks as writing a book, composing a symphony or inventing the computer. Yet, what is special about the human cerebral cortex is a longstanding question in neuroscience. Fortunately, at present, there are methods that allow us to examine human brain organization and function at a level of detail similar to or even greater than that we can obtain with animal models. In this talk, I will emphasise how the application of these methods has shown that the human cerebral cortex displays clear species-specific variations in cortical microstructure and that it is likely that as more detailed studies are carried out on human cortical circuits, we will discover many more differences at the genetic, molecular, structural, and physiological levels between humans and other species. Thus, not only does the increase in size, and therefore in complexity, of our brains seem to be responsible for our higher or more abstract mental abilities but also, the specialization of our cortical circuits appears to be critical.

A webinar about the broad landscape of European neuroscience networks. Organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET), hosted on Neuronline.

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

Article published in Neuron

Malfunctioning of neuronal circuits and peripheral systems (e.g metabolism, immune or microbiota) underlie aspects of psychiatric disorders. One of the major challenges in neuroscience is understanding the mechanisms and temporal dynamics of such changes within discrete neuronal connections, or within precise peripheral players. Such understanding can reveal new therapeutic strategies and refine existing ones.

Webinar organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET), hosted on Neuronline.

Talk by Yoko Wang, The University of Adelaide

Since we were born, we have shared our life with millions of tiny little buddies in our gut. These tiny little buddies, or the gut microbiota, play important roles in regulating the gut-brain axis. In recent years, research in this field has rapidly grown, increasing our understanding on how gut microbiota communicate to the brain and influence our health. In this talk, we will unbox the amazing world of the microbiota-gut-brain axis – learning about their history, the current progress and future directions.

The Corpus Curiosum series was produced with the support of FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)

Talk by Dr Paco Calvo, University of Murcia

Bored of classroom-based education? Tired of getting lost and spacing out? Fed-up being stuffed with somebody else’s knowledge; the type of “knowledge” that you are simply expected to parrot the day of the exam, then wait for your grades which mean…. nothing really? Welcome to the Hippocampus-Fattening Farm, the educational system you have been raised in since Primary school, all the way into college, and beyond! My aim in this talk is to promote forms of learning based on trying o “know less” and think outside the box more. I shall illustrate how this can help propel creativity in the discussion of plant intelligence in the (neuro)cognitive sciences, robotics and AI.

The Corpus Curiosum series was produced with the support of FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)

Get the best information on how you can use ORCID to get visibility for your published work and receive practical advice, ideas and the best tips directly from FENS and ORCID. Do you want to learn how to connect your ORCID iD with FENS.org and ensure you get recognition for all your contributions? This flash-FENS online session provides you with the necessary information about ORCID, followed by a demo on how to use your ORCID ID and a 15-minutes Q&A session.

Talk by Folu Oyefeso, Loma Linda University

The human brain is a complex network of cells with special functions to control how we interact with the world. Within the brain, these cells are grouped into areas responsible for thinking, moving, sensing, among many other things! However, it is notoriously difficult to study the human brain directly and so scientists use animal and two-dimensional cell culture models to learn more about it. Recently, trained teams of cell biologists and neuroscientists have begun to generate three-dimensional brain organoids, which are small clumps of tissue containing the same types of cells we see in the brain. These tissues can model specific brain regions (e.g. cortex) and diseases (e.g. Zika virus infection or Parkinson’s disease). In this session, we’ll discuss how these models have been used and how they could be used in the future.

The Corpus Curiosum series was produced with the support of FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)

Despite a long historical relationship between science and philosophy, scientists today tend to see philosophy as very different from, and indeed even antagonistic to, the scientific endecour.

Social media have profoundly changed the ways information is communicated and news can be manipulated by groups, aimed at spreading their opinions rather than scientifically verified data. As a consequence, communication has become more difficult for researchers who had to modify they way they communicate in order to meet the public attention.

During this event, panellists discussed and tried to understand the context in which fake-news develop, the basis for behaviours associated with fake-news and the brain areas and neurotransmitters associated with those behaviours.

This special interest event was organised by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training at the FENS Forum 2022 (9-13 July 2022, Paris).

Present-day fake news generates an “information disorder” in which news satire, parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising, and propaganda are blended and denoted using a threefold distinction: (1) misinformation, that is, unintentional incorrect information; (2) disinformation, that is, the deliberate fabrication and/or sharing of false information; (3) mal-information, that is, deliberate publication of true private/sensitive information with change of context (cherry picking).

This EJN Editorial was published following the Special Interest Event organised at FENS Forum 2022 by the FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET).

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

Opinion article produced by FENS-Kavli Scholars (FKNE), and published in the European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).