Neuroscience 2026 Exhibitor List

In this session, the speaker will reflect on a career as a neurologist, where neuroimaging studies of depression defined the circuits that ultimately led to the development of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treatment-resistant depression. The speaker will describe how this work evolved into a transdisciplinary, team-based program integrating clinical insight, imaging, engineering, and basic science, and highlight lessons learned in building collaborations and translating discoveries into therapies.

The speaker’s research involves the study of specializations of ion channels and synaptic physiology that permit neurons to transmit signals with specific informational content, particularly in the context of well-timed sensory and motor signals. In this session, she will discuss her scientific trajectory and how it has led her to the questions she has addressed in the laboratory.

How are brain circuits assembled during development? This question has driven the speaker’s research journey. In this session, he will present his work on axon guidance in the brainstem and visual system, highlighting the experimental approaches he has used — from mouse genetics to tissue clearing and 3D imaging. More recently, his interests have expanded to the evolution of axon guidance mechanisms, exploring diverse animal models and revisiting human embryology. Beyond the science, he will share how his path has been shaped by serendipity, collaborations, and the emergence of new technologies.

Dr. Kosik will discuss international research that meshes clinical experience with molecular biology and neurogenetics. The research focuses on the largest kindred of familial Alzheimer’s disease in the world and is the basis of a drug prevention trial beginning before dementia symptoms. The team has sequenced additional cases with early onset dementia and uncovered numerous novel mutations. The close relationship of the researchers and families has created a strong humanist element to the project.

In this session, a running theme will be the role of a class of c-fibres in what one could call a “protection racket,” and the effects of serendipity in the speaker’s research journey over the past ~40 years. The c-fibres in question are the nociceptor, the pruriceptor, and the relatively new addition for human research, the “hedonoceptor.” Pain and itch will serve as examples of how vital such “harm detectors” are to survival, but the focus will be hedonoceptors and how working in a soap company provided the intellectual freedom and financial support to fund this journey.

With the rapid development of technologies to monitor and perturb the brain's activity, there is a need for modern statistical methods to dissect and interpret neural activity. Dr. Yu will discuss the benefits of quantitative and experimental scientists working together at every stage of the scientific process: from experimental conception and design, to analysis of data, to development of new statistical tools, and beyond. He will also provide examples of studying the activity of large populations of neurons using dimensionality reduction.

Feelings are central to human experience. They arise from distributed neural processes that integrate sensory and somatic input, contextual beliefs, and personal goals. In this session, the speaker will describe research on how feelings are constructed and regulated in the brain, and why understanding their neural foundations matters on both personal and scientific levels.

In this session, the speaker will describe recent discoveries on how microglia sense, respond to, and regulate neuronal activity in health and disease. The session will highlight in vivo imaging approaches to study microglia-neuron interaction and its implication for circuit function, plasticity, and neurological disorders. The speaker will also outline a long-term vision to harness brain immune cells for therapeutic development.

Studies show that astrocytes are powerful controllers of synapse formation, function, plasticity and elimination. One human astrocyte can interact with up to two million synapses. How these glial cells evolved to gain their structure and how their structure mediates their enigmatic functions is still unknown. Dr. Eroglu’s laboratory identified many mechanisms that mediate astrocyte-neuron signaling, which controls synapse formation and maturation in concert with astrocyte morphogenesis and functional specification. Dr. Eroglu will discuss these findings within her personal journey that took her from her engineering origins to a cellular molecular neurobiologist.

In this session, the speaker will present cross-species data to understand how peripheral immune cells interact with the brain to regulate circuits involved in depression and anxiety. It also highlights translational efforts to study stress-induced neuroimmune dysfunction, including inflammation and monocytosis. These findings underscore the need for targeted therapies to treat major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by modulating neuroimmune pathways.

It is hard to say what is more rewarding — discovering new information or training others to make their own discoveries. Academic scientists have the privilege of doing both. Work in the Goodrich laboratory examines how neurons in the eye and ear become specialized for their unique functions. Dr. Goodrich will discuss her own development as a neuroscientist and an educator, highlighting key decision points and lessons learned that have helped her to find harmony and satisfaction at work and in life.

How does the brain assemble a meaningful interpretation of the visual world from the sparse signals from the eyes? To address this, leveraging previous clinical experience, the speaker studies individuals in whom vision is abnormal at the level of the eyes or at the level of the brain. This session will discuss the use of a reverse engineering approach to elucidate the normal neural system from studies of an impaired system, has shed light on how humans recognize complex patterns such as words and faces, and how, in longitudinal studies, plasticity can lead to reorganization of visual cortex.

Dr. Tonegawa will first briefly walk through almost 60 years of training and research spanning from molecular genetics to immunology to neuroscience. He will then describe in detail what is currently known about how memory of experience is formed, stored in the brain, and retrieved for recall, focusing on the discovery of 'memory engrams' and their artificial manipulations. Dr. Tonegawa will end the talk by introducing a very recent study on the discovery of the hippocampal event code for knowledge that can be transferred across multiple tasks, making learning more efficient.