Neuroscience 2011, Day 3

A brief round-up today, as it is late, and I should be getting a good night's sleep before getting on the plane tomorrow. Alas, today was my last full day at Neuroscience.

In the morning, I saw Svante Pääbo's talk. Pääbo's talk was erudite, with a little occasional dry humour. Pääbo started with his now well-known work on the Neandertal and Denisovan ancient genes, then went on a rather different direction to talk about mouse neuroscience research he's involved with to see if they can track down what the mutations that are found only in modern humans, and not Neandertals or Denisovans, actually do. Carl Zimmer will tell the story infinitely better than I can.

It was all very cool, but it left me wondering where the neuroethics were - as this was billed as the Knopf Neuroethics lecture.

After catching a few posters in the afternoon, my student Nadia and I went to the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience social. FUN was having its own poster session, and we were presenting there. There were 707 unique attendees at the social, and that's bigger than some stand alone international conferences I've been to!

The poster session was shorter than a regular poster session on the main floor of Neuroscience. In all other ways the FUN session equaled the main poster session in the crowded poster spaces, the quality of the science, and the volume.

After that was done, I made my way to the B.A.N.T.E.R. party, which was conveniently located right in Madhatters nearby our hotel. Many people had already left by the time I got there, but it was still lovely to meet a lot of my online friends. After originally being upstairs, we got put into an upside down room with a table setting on the ceiling.

There were a few more other blog-worth stories, but they will have to wait for now. I might write them on the plane back tomorrow. No, wait... it's after midnight, which means I am flying home later today.