09 November 2002

Society for Neuroscience 2002 Report, Part 1


31 October: Travel.

Air travel is fast and efficient... once you're in the air, that is. We spent a lot of time hanging around in airports, most particularly waiting for a shuttle in Orlando to take us to our hotel. Still, Hallowe'en is always fun, and we saw a few staff in the Houston and Orlando airports in a little makeup.

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1 November: Karger Workshop

The Karger Workshop is an annual symposium held by the J.B. Johnston Cub, and sponsored by the Karger publishing company. This year workshop was titled something like, "The Comparative Evolution of Cognition." I thought the title was a bit of a misnomer, because most of the meeting focused on only one topic: spatial memory. It was a much narrower symposium than the title indicated.

I have lunch with Phil Stoddard, the junior Program Committee for the Animal Behaviour Society, to discuss the symposium I'm hoping to hold next year. Phil is a thin, intense invididual, and I often think he's more gung ho to hold this symposium than I am. He talks about wanting people to leave the symposium thinking, "That's how I want to be studying behaviour!" While I think convincing behaviourists to go back to their labs and pick up microelectrodes is a tall order, I do appreciate Phil's enthusiasm and support.

Lunch with Phil is a good push to one of my major goals for this meeting: to find speakers and topics for my symposium.

To be continued...

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