The Symposium for Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience (SCAN) was planned for 2020 as a forum in which to develop intellectual community among those interested in human auditory cognitive neuroscience in a lively gathering in Pittsburgh, PA. Of course, 2020 had other things planned.

With uncertainty persisting into 2021 we are hoping that you will join us in the Symposium for Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience ‘Un-Conference’ to take place over the course of 2021.

With an eye toward Zoom fatigue, we are planning four themed special sessions (April 16, May 21, September 24, October 29). 

Each will take place from 11am-2pm EST on a Friday to accommodate a wide variety of time zones and will involve three invited talks followed by an online gathering to encourage interaction. We will have ‘unconference’ provocateurs to make the event as interactive as possible in the virtual world.

A major goal of SCAN is to offer trainees the prospect of interacting with leaders in the field. To accomplish this at a distance, there will be four SCAN Early Career Roundtables, scheduled a week after each mini-symposium. This will allow a group of early career researchers selected from an application process have a chance to interact with the speakers in a more intimate online setting. 

Learn more and register: https://events.mcs.cmu.edu/scan2021/

Sheena Josselyn, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist, Program in Neuroscience & Mental Health

The Hospital for Sick Children, Research Institute, University of Toronto

Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 4:00pm E.T.

Making Memories in Mice

Abstract:

Understanding how the brain uses information is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. Several human disorders (ranging from autism spectrum disorder to PTSD to Alzheimer’s disease) may stem from disrupted information processing. Therefore, this basic knowledge is not only critical for understanding normal brain function, but also vital for the development of new treatment strategies for these disorders. Memory may be defined as the retention over time of internal representations gained through experience, and the capacity to reconstruct these representations at later times. Long-lasting physical brain changes (‘engrams’) are thought to encode these internal representations. The concept of a physical memory trace likely originated in ancient Greece, although it wasn’t until 1904 that Richard Semon first coined the term ‘engram’. Despite its long history, finding a specific engram has been challenging, likely because an engram is encoded at multiple levels (epigenetic, synaptic, cell assembly). My lab is interested in understanding how specific neurons are recruited or allocated to an engram, and how neuronal membership in an engram may change over time or with new experience. Here I will describe both older and new unpublished data in our efforts to understand memories in mice.

Bio:

Sheena Josselyn is a Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and a Professor in the departments of Psychology and Physiology at the University of Toronto in Canada.  She holds a Canada Research Chair in Brain Mechanisms underlying Memory, is a Senior Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Her undergraduate degrees and a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology were granted by Queen’s University in Kingston (Canada).  Sheena received a PhD in Neuroscience/Psychology from the University of Toronto with Dr. Franco Vaccarino.  She conducted post-doctoral work with Dr. Mike Davis (Yale University) and Dr. Alcino Silva (UCLA) before returning to Toronto.

Dr. Josselyn received several awards, including the Innovations in Psychopharmacology Award from the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CCNP) and the Effron Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). 

Dr. Josselyn is interested in understanding how the brain encodes, stores and uses information. Several human disorders (ranging from autism spectrum disorder to Alzheimer’s disease) may stem from disrupted information processing. Therefore, this basic knowledge is not only critical for understanding normal brain function, but also vital for the development of new treatment strategies for these disorders.

Learn more: https://www.cmu.edu/ni/events/lecture-series/carnegie-prize/carnegie-prize-2021-josselyn.html