Podcast – BNA 2023 – Festival of Neuroscience Highlights

Voice Over:

Brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society & Race Against Dementia, and the Alzheimer’s Association, bringing you research, news, career tips, and support.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher Podcast. I’m Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali, senior lecturer in biomedical science at Teesside University and regular Dementia Researcher blogger. Today we’ve got an episode that’s going to stimulate your neurons because we are going to be talking about the recent British Neuroscience Association Festival or BNA for short, and we’re going to be bringing you some of the most exciting and thought-provoking highlights from this incredible event. We’ve got a fantastic lineup of special guests joining us, each with their own unique perspective on the latest trends and breakthroughs in their fields of discovery from cutting edge science to inspiring stories of perseverance and discovery. This episode is packed with insights and inspiration for anyone that’s interested in the field of neuroscience. So, sit back, relax, and get ready to have your mind blown as we reminisce on our week in Brighton.

So, let’s meet our guests. First, we have the incredible Dr. Charlie Arber. Next, we have the brilliant Dr. Dorothy Tse, also the fabulous Dr. Dayne Beccano-Kelly. And last but not least, the awesome Dr. Nora Bengoa. Welcome everyone.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Hey.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Hey.

Dr Charlie Arber:

Hey.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Thanks for having us.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Hello.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Hey.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

So why don’t you all introduce yourselves properly? So, let’s start with Charlie.

Dr Charlie Arber:

Okay. Hi everyone. My name’s Charlie Arber. I’m a senior research fellow at the Institute of Neurology here at UCL, and my work focuses on stem cell models of familial Alzheimer’s disease. So, I am trying to understand the early mechanisms of disease with a view to trying to reverse Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Thanks, Charlie. And Dorothy.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Hi everyone, my name is Dorothy. I’m a senior lecturer at Edge Hill University, also an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh. I’m a neuroscientist and I’m interested in memory and learning, healthy aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. So currently I’m working to develop a behavioral paradigm in spatial navigation that has a better translation between animals and human studies.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Thanks Dorothy. And over to Dayne.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Hi, I’m Dayne Beccano-Kelly. I am a group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute here at Cardiff University. My work focuses on Parkinson’s and looks at trying to mimic the longitudinal timeline of the disorder to really understand how and what changes over time at the synaptic level.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Welcome, Dayne. And over to Nora.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Hi, I’m Nora. I work at ABCN or Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience here in the sunny northern Spain. I am a principal investigator and I lead the lab of aggregation and glial response. We’re really interested in looking at how proteins like synuclein or tau can aggregate and elicit glial responses in both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Welcome everyone to the podcast. So, for those listeners outside the UK or for those who don’t work in neuroscience, let me set the scene for you and please stick with us because I promise you’ll still find this show interesting even if you’re not in the world of fundamental science. Now, the BNA International Festival of Neuroscience is a unique dynamic and inclusive meeting. As you would expect, it has an incredible scientific program, but also a real festival feels with fringe and community engagement events across the city, career development talks, workshops, symposia, a silent theater, rapid fire porter talks, and much, much more.

Now, the format for these types of chores is simple. So, we’re going to go around the studio, the virtual studio we’ve got today a few times sharing our highlights, summarizing any talks, postures, any sessions, sharing our takeaways, not literally our food takeaways, but our takeaways from the festival of course, and generally helping anyone who could attend to feel as if they were there. So, I know we were all involved in sessions and events during the meeting, so why don’t we start by sharing how these went? So, Charlie, let’s start with you. So, if I’m right, you spoke and you co-chaired a session, so how was that?

Dr Charlie Arber:

It was great. I suppose it was the first time that I’ve been involved in sharing a session at quite a large meeting like this. So, I did a little bit of preparation in advance, and we had two speakers online and two speakers in person. And I suppose the biggest challenge was that we had someone speaking from Uganda and we either had their voice or their video and never both at the same time. So, we had to quickly think on our feet and reshuffle the order of speakers. And then thankfully the audio-visual team were brilliant and sorted it for them afterwards and it was really well worth it because it was a disease that I knew nothing about, nodding syndrome, which has something to do with tau in African population. So, it was fascinating and well worth sticking with it in the end.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

So, what was the session on?

Dr Charlie Arber:

It was translational advances. It was a bit of a mix. So, I spoke about stem cell models, someone else spoke about astrocytes. We had nodding syndrome and then we had antibodies as well. So, it was about fundamental advances, and it was great. It was nice to see a mix of topics all sorts aiming towards the same thing. So, it was great. Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I think that’s one of the benefits of one of these kind of broader neuroscience meetings because you do get to mix with scientists that are working on different things compared to what your personal topic might be and it’s kind of almost broadens the work that maybe you are going to be involved in. And you can speak with other people that you might not normally speak with because they’re not in your direct area of work. Dorothy, I know that you were also involved in speaking and co-chairing a session as well. Am I right?

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Yeah, so the session that I chaired is about spatial memory. So, it’s a behavioral insight into the nature of spatial memory and it’s convened by European Brain and Behavior Society. So, it’s linked between behavioral and also cognitive processes of neuromechanisms. And so, there are four speakers. Like Charlie’s session, we have two speakers online and two speakers in person. And so, we’ve got one speaker who’s from Dartmouth University in the USA. So, time zone-wise, we got to liaise about that. And then the symposium itself is about recent studies in the area of spatial memory. For example, there are recent studies in place cells. And for those of you who don’t know what place cells are, place cells or neurons in the hippocampus that fire when the animal visits specific regions. So, we call that place cells and place fields.

So, it’s the lots of animal studies and also one of the speakers talked about humans’ life studies cognitive navigation too. So, it’s very interesting and I like it because there is a mixture of animal studies and also human studies. So, it’s a good multidisciplinary session looking into both the animals and humans and in spatial navigation.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I think it’s one of those areas of fundamental science where you can see the direct implications. I mean, this is Dementia Researcher Podcast, but think looking at fundamental science in terms of spatial memory, episodic memory, looking at animal models to determine what those fundamental processes are can have translation over to trying to understand then in disease models and then in human disease, especially relating to dementia where we know that some of those early cognitive changes that we see are to do with spatial navigation, to do with episodic memory. So yeah, definitely I can see how a session like that would appeal to people that are both working with animal models and doing human studies as well. Sounds really exciting. Nora, you were also involved in the session as well. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Sure. I was co-chair to the session on techniques and technologies for the study of Parkinson’s disease, which was sponsored by Parkinson’s UK or PD UK. And I think we had a fantastic mix of different topics there because we had a talk by Caleb Webber exploring the heterogeneity in iPSC models, which was radically different, for example, to that of Jado [inaudible 00:09:59], who was talking on how we can use perhaps exosomes or ectosomes, which I did not know existed until this very talk. Well, he presented a biochemical study, but I think the further ahead route of research would be to use these and harness the potential between the different sorts of these [inaudible 00:10:22] in order to use them as biomarkers.

And then we had a fantastic talk by Amanda Lewis on the classification of Lewy bodies, and so a bit of what Dayne’s lab explores, but at the Lewy body level. If we start with a pale body, which is the very early lesion in Parkinson’s where synuclein seems to start to accumulate, how does that then mature let’s say into a Lewy body? And she just does beautiful CLEM studies that just blew me away to be honest. It’s just so nice and such a very fantastic continuation to the early field shocking [inaudible 00:11:04] paper a few years back that it was such a privilege to co-host really.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

And how did you get involved with that, Nora, in terms of the organization of that session?

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Well, I feel like the credit is for Dayne and David Dexter because I simply laid back and got an email from David Dexter, but I feel like he may have gotten some poking from Dayne. You might have to ask Dayne actually, because I was just delighted to receive the invitation and it was a wonderful experience and the BNA as a whole was a wonderful experience.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Well, shall we naturally hand over to Dayne then?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

No, no, you’ve got it all entirely on your own merit. Don’t try and push and deflect this away, Nora. You know you were there on your merit and that was really good. I was actually at that session. It was a wonderful session, and I can fully concur all of the talks within that session, including your own. It was really good and really refreshing. I did a few things at the BNA; it was quite busy. Full disclosure, I’m co-chair for the BNA 2023 program organizing committee and a joint meeting secretary. So, I had a hand in setting everything up I suppose, although actually full credit, which needs to really go to the team, the real people that were doing the work. So, Sophie and Joe and Louise and Danny and Sophie Grange. So, they were really the ones that put everything together.

But I did end up running around a little bit. I chaired a couple of plenary sessions, one for Joanna Wardlaw who has done some fantastic work across the course of her career. So, she was rewarded with the John Wollstonevraft lecture, which celebrates leaders in the field of neuroscience and neurotransmission. And she was talking about her work involving Lackey too. So, she was looking at the translation of the work that she’s done into clinical trials, looking at how to help with lacunar infarct and the vasculature within the brain and how this can then have a knock-on effect to improving cognition, which really spoke to me. Way back when I did my PhD, I used to work on stroke on the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, so I really liked that talk a lot. And I also got to equally have another chair of another plenary session, which was Dimitri Kullmann, which is another honor.

He’s done some great work on electrophysiology, excitability, is a neurologist and he was talking about some of the work that he’s going on to do to make trials using really, really fascinating stuff with driving or silencing the activity of neurons based on an activity dependent manner. So, using potassium channels to drive silencing in those neurons, which then actually increases an activity at the time. And then I’m sure we’re going to get onto it later, but I was at some of the other satellite areas, so some of the speed dating and the careers talks and sessions and I thought it was really good. It was really fun. It was great to interact with lots of people. As a lot of people said, it was great to see people in 3D. I know we’re doing this online, it’s a necessity here, but it’s great to meet and chat with people in real life and remember how short and tall everybody is in real life. So that’s always good.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It does make a difference, doesn’t it? And I’m quite a short person and it’s the first time that I have met some people in real life as well. But I can always assume people are going to be taller than me. But I think maybe they get shocked with how I’m only 5’1, so I’m quite short.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I think I imagine myself taller than everybody else and I get the shock of my life when everybody’s towering over me, and I prefer it online now. It’s better for [inaudible 00:15:06].

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I also want to mention, Dorothy and I were also involved in a session that was organized by the BNA and also the ALBA Network, which is an organization that promotes diversity and equity in neuroscience. And it involved us and others kind of running round table discussions on topics such as careers, work-life balance, reducing unconscious bias, things like that. And then co-producing solutions with those who attended. ‘Cause I think a lot of the time when we talk about these issues that, not necessarily specific to neuroscience, but more to academia more broadly, we’re highlighting what the problems are, but not very forthcoming with how we solve these problems. And actually, if there are any solutions, it tends to come top down. So, the idea of actually co-producing solutions I thought was really innovative and exciting. So, Dorothy and I were involved in this session with those who attended. So, Dorothy, why don’t you tell us how you found that session went for you?

Dr Dorothy Tse:

I found it great because it’s a workshop too. So, we were divided into eight tables, round tables. So, we discuss different topics and then we share and then rotate and then discuss further of these topics. So as Kamar mentioned, the topics are about work-life balance and career paths and job security, which I think is important especially for early career researchers, and definition of excellence and mobility and unconscious bias. So, there are lots of diverse topics we discussed. And Kamar, I think you hosted the career paths session? Yes. So, with me I did on the work-life balance. I found it’s hard also. I did some homework before I chaired this session. So, I think it’s important to find out what are the core things that you like to do in life and then you make sure you do them first before you have these other small tasks occupy you.

And I think we had a really good discussion, and everybody just joined in and worked on some solutions for that. And I remember one of the researchers talking about work-life balance, so we have to manage our time and prioritize things. And we also have some practical solutions for that, for example, zero inbox when you do your emails. So, make sure you clear it as soon as possible. So just again, prioritize. So, I think it’s good that some practical solutions come out.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

As you said, Dorothy, my table, we were looking at career paths. So, we rotated the tables three times, so I had three groups and what really shocked me was the same things produced in each group. So, they were sharing that within their institutions, careers outside of academia aren’t really promoted within their departments, within their universities. And I was quite surprised by that because sometimes you see things advertised about things like medical writing or working in industry, but either it’s not getting to postdocs and PhD students, it’s not advertised as well, or they’re just not frequently organized enough. They’re kind of sporadic, they’re not kind of there enough or promoted enough. I feel some people said that they couldn’t talk about careers outside of academia within their group because it was almost seen as failing or not pursuing what maybe their PI wanted.

And it’s just a shame that people might want to explore but don’t feel like they can explore options outside of their PhD. And I think we need to think of PhDs and postdocs as training for a multitude of different career options. And I’ve written about that a lot for Dementia Researcher. So, it was a shame that these same problems were coming up, so it’s obviously something that’s quite prevalent. But then we also produced some really, really great solutions. So we know that some funders as part of their PhDs, they have these almost internships I guess you could call them that are kind of built into the PhD studentships where they can go and spend some time in a career outside of academia, whether that’s spending some time working with a medical writing company or working with industry so they can actually have some exposure to these different options, not just academia.

And I think one thing that came back was actually that should be more widely available to students but also to postdocs because I think it is only a select few funders that do offer that at the moment. So, we did produce some good solutions, but it’ll be interesting to see now how we move forward in potentially trying to implement some of those solutions. I don’t know what any of the rest of the panel think about that.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

I think it’s definitely a worry that people are not comfortable sharing that they’re wanting to explore things outside of academia. I think from a language perspective as well as a community, we should strive to stop calling them alternative careers. I think it just ingrains that concept that the way is academia and anything else is just the other stuff. And it’s not. These are careers, all of them are careers. And with my team for example, I ask them not on a daily basis, but every so often, maybe they think I act too much. But I do ask them quite regularly, what do you think it is that you want to do later? And I do explore a lot of the different options with them, and I do try to give them SPIs. What I mean is we can give them our contacts. I’m sure everyone or almost everyone who has gone to industry or to academic writing or to medical writing or to any type of career option that is not academia is more than happy to spare some minutes and even just have a conversation.

Because the placements seem like a fantastic opportunity, but I can see how that is difficult to make widely available to everyone. But just to have a conversation over Zoom, these days everyone will engage in that. And just for us as PIs to promote that as much as possible and to try to convince early career researchers or ECRs to just really don’t be afraid to ask because well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, but also you really shouldn’t be afraid to ask. And if you feel like you’re not comfortable with your PI, we’re all online. I’m sure this panel here is more than happy to help. So just reach out and we’ll be happy to help.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Absolutely. I completely agree, Nora. I think that what you said there, you shouldn’t be calling them sort of alternative careers. They are just careers. They’re all careers. And another point is when we send off PhDs and postdocs to another lab and we see it as growth for a network, we can now have ties to another network. The same can be held true for moving into different areas. So, if I have friends that have moved into the GO-Science or the Government Office for Science in the UK and that have ties to politics and government and policy design is very vital for a lot of the stuff we do and that’s very useful as well. I have friends and colleagues that have moved into IP and ideas development. And this is also really useful if we have patents or if we have other things coming out. So, we shouldn’t be so narrow-minded as just to think that the ties that we can form only consist of other academic institutions.

I mean, I’ve put people into contact with these people before at PhD level, at postdoc level even. When we were at Oxford, Nora, I ran a program where we did talks from these external sources so that you could show that it’s not only academia robust, but there are also other ways and means of doing things. So, I’m really interested to know, Kamar and Dorothy, the people that were at your table, was it one particular age profile or demographic? Was it only PhDs or was its PhDs and postdocs, or were there occasionally some PIs there as well?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

There were predominantly PhD students on my tables and postdocs, but interestingly we did have a few people that worked outside of academia already. So, it was really good to get their perspective on what their experience was like moving outside of academia and how they transitioned. So yeah, it was a bit of a mix, but I don’t think I had any PIs on my table. I don’t know about you Dorothy.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Yeah, so in my table, so three rounds, there are some PIs, not majority and there are some students, PhD students, but they have prior experience in working in industry before they go to PhDs. Which is very interesting because it’s given a different perspective because we talk about long hours and working long hours in academic again, because it’s linked to work-life balance so one of the key themes we talk about is long hours do not equal to productive hours. So, I think that’s hitting a lot of people with the work long hours in the lab, but sometimes taking a break and setting boundaries are also important. And I also would like to echo what Nora and Dayne mentioned, I think it’s important also for the PI to actually encourage or support the students to look into different career options. I found that during this discussion some of the PhD students mentioned that again, they were worried to spend time outside whether they’re doing experiments, to look into different career options. So, I think it’s important maybe as a role model or support your lab to grow in that way.

Dr Charlie Arber:

Can I just pick up on that? I think it’s just amazing that we’re talking about the career development, and it was my first time going to BNA and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but it was one of the massive highlights that there was so much thought and community spirit behind it as well as career development. For example, I went to a CV clinic because I never knew six-page CVs were normal in science, so it was good to know, but as well as that there’s the open access with the BNA’s own journal, there’s credibility and reproducibility and there was a whole plenary session on a credibility and reproducibility that was amazing. For example, what represents an N number in reproducibility between experiments? Which was really interesting to discuss. And even pre-registration, which I hadn’t really considered, but for all topics. Pre-registration for even a basic science experiment, what are you expecting? What are you hoping to get out of it?

I think was really interesting to hear because sometimes looking back after an experiment, oh I did actually do what I said I was going to do, and you might have more positivity after an experiment than you thought. But I think it was just amazing to see the BNA as a society, sort of all these extra things outside the academia which I was really impressed by, and I loved.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I agree Charlie, they’re definitely pushing forward on a lot of those different agendas and their leaders in a lot of those things definitely. Since we’re talking about careers, Dayne, can I come back to you? ‘Cause I know that you were involved in the work in the career zone and in the career speed dating as well. Am I right? If so, how did that go for you?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Those were excellent. It was my first-time speed dating, and it was an excellent experience. I really enjoyed myself. Now I met some fantastic PhDs and postdocs at the speed dating session, sat at the table and obviously the idea is you rotate rounds and have quick chats with everybody. It was really good to see a breadth of idea sets and questions and really get to chat with a wide variety of people. That’s another bonus of the BNA, I really think is that you get to talk to neuroscientists not just from Parkinson’s and not just even more niche from the synaptic or electrophysiological angle which sometimes is the realms that I walk in. But to talk to structural protein biologists and just fundamental mechanisms of science and it was really, really refreshing, and interesting to hear the same sorts of questions coming from them as the students and postdocs that I usually see. How do you progress on the career ladder? What would you look for in a postdoc? What would be the next step for me? How do I approach and apply for fellowships and funding, et cetera.

But there was an energy, there was a really nice energy about it. Everybody was enjoying themselves; they were eager to talk, eager to ask questions. Nobody felt, I feel over awed by talking to anybody. In fact, what I heard back from a few of them at the speed dating was that they couldn’t believe there were people at higher up levels like Patrik Brundin or David Dexter walking around and just engaging and interacting with them. And I think they were a bit starstruck in some cases, which was great to hear because that’s good that they were having such good interactions. And then the career clinic was similar, it was people coming up and talking about what they were trying to do, what they were trying to achieve. We were next to the CV clinic Charlie, and there was lots of people there also and yeah, it was good to see that there was, at least from my perspective, a lot of engagement with what could possibly be considered the sort of more satellite things at the meeting. Not just the talks but these extra bits, and there was a lot of engagement with that which I think was really, really, really good. It’s exactly what we would have wanted.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Sounds fantastic. So, what I would like to ask you about now is any other sessions, any other posters, events that were a particular highlight for you? So, let’s start with Charlie. So, anything that your kind of experienced during the meeting that was a particular highlight for you could be a particular session, any particular postures or any of these kind of satellite events that we’ve just mentioned?

Dr Charlie Arber:

So, I think one of the talks I wanted to see the most was probably the first talk on the first day, Sunday. So, I caught the very first train from my station at home and only missed the first five minutes of the first talk, but it was around immunotherapy and Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases. And James Nickel from Southampton was presenting data on some of the older trials with immunotherapy and Alzheimer’s disease where the drug was AB1792. And what they did was inject amyloid into people, evoke an immune response and that then clears plaques from the brain. And those trials were 10, 20 years ago now. So, some people have passed away since then and he’s looked at the pathology in those brains. And what’s interesting is obviously the plaques are cleared away, but also some of the microglial activation is reduced and the pathology seems like there’s been a positive effect of some of these drugs.

And the reason this was such a highlight now especially is because of the news at the time of recording just yesterday, but when this goes out last week around donanemab as the second passive immunotherapy I suppose. So, this is giving antibodies rather than the antigen. Donanemab is the second antibody, two and a half I’d say after aducanumab, but we now have three antibodies that can effectively clear away plaques and two that effectively showed slowing of cognitive decline, which I think is really exciting and it’s taken 20 even 30 years since the discovery of amyloid. But we’re really on the cusp of something exciting now and I think looking at some of these pathologies and some of the results from the trials 10, 20 years ago is really fascinating about how it works and what we need to do to take this forward. So, I think that’s really one of the highlights, was to see the state of the art and where we are with new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

So, a highlight at the very beginning pretty much of the meeting sounds really interesting. So, Nora, what about you? What was a particular highlight that stuck out for you?

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

I think one of the highlights that I’d like to mention, which has tangentially already been mentioned is basically just the diversity in the program. So, it is very easy to just talk about the neuron and just have neuron-centric talks. And when I talk about diversity, people naturally go to EDI and inclusivity, but I also think about it in the topics that are covered. And just to have so much glial research in the program to acknowledge that these cells are really important in neuroscience that we just should not be focusing on a subset of them and to explore all that is just absolutely fantastic. And there was PD UK session where Hazel Hall-Roberts and Julia TZW and Emma Mead amongst others were really not only looking at the biology of microglia, but also using these cells for screening assays because again, we’ve been focusing on the neuron a lot and we’ve just not paid attention to the glia.

And to just be using them now in functional studies and to look at drug discovery I think is fantastic, but I also think it speaks to the organizing and the building the program because if you don’t plan these sessions, we’d simply miss out on these talks and we don’t get that diversity in the cellular context of the brain.

Dr Charlie Arber:

I’d just like to agree wholeheartedly. That was a fantastic session and hammering your point home, I think Julia TCW’s results show that you only see phenotypes when you co-culture the glia with neurons and you don’t see them when you grow these cells on their own. I think really supports what you’re saying.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Exactly. Great. For example, Alzheimer’s, they’re multifactorial diseases. If it were a Mendelian P if you will, if it were just down to one gene, we would already have cracked it and we haven’t. So, we just need to build in that diversity into the programs of the scientific meetings, our models, everything.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Yeah, really good point. I think one of the challenges with a broad neuroscience meeting is having these parallel sessions and covering all these things. ‘Cause I certainly found that there were several different sessions that were happening at the same time and found it really difficult to pick the ones that I wanted to go to ’cause there was several happening at the same time that were really relevant for what I’m interested in. So, Dorothy, what about you? What was a particular highlight?

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Would like to echo with Nora and Charlie. So, I think when talking about diversity apart from topics, I think it’s the elements also with diversity. So, I think one of my highlights is the last talk on Colin Blakemore. I found it quite moving. Not only talk about how amazing Colin’s work was, the importance of the plasticity in the brain and focusing on postnatal plasticity of visual system because he’s amazing in doing that. Also, you can see people who previously worked from his lab actually presenting a lot about his work and also, he was a great mentor. So, I think that elements moved me a lot because Tara Spires-Jones’s sources talk about that. So, I think it was great.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Thanks Dorothy. And Dayne, what kind of stuck out as a highlight for you?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

So just to complete the set, I’m really pleased to hear that everybody really enjoyed the breadth of the types of sessions that were held and the different platforms with which that was given. So, the posters and the talks and the parallel sessions and then things like the speed dating. So that’s really good to hear. One of the things behind the scenes that we, just to give you a little insight, Kamar, that’s exactly what we wanted to hear, is that you couldn’t pick because some of the parallel sessions were so good rather than, well none of them were that good so I went for a walk down the beach and went to getting some fish and chips alongside the pier just for this particular session. It’s good that there’s so much to see and to do. That’s right. And I’m glad that it was like that. And I felt like that. At one point I was jumping between parallel sessions, which was hard. I’m trying to gauge it and write all these notes down, which was really good.

But one of the real highlights for me was watching Patrik Brundin Brendan talk, not just because of the science that he was doing, so he was talking about synuclein apathy and synuclein based models, but he was very balanced about the idea of synuclein and its impact in Parkinson’s, of its input, but not that it’s solely to do with only synuclein. And sometimes things can become fairly dogmatic in the field and it’s really nice to hear from somebody so eminent as himself that there are other ways and means. And these possibly could be modifiers of the disorder as well as driving forces. There’s a spectrum as there is across all neurological conditions. And it affects people differently and we see different outcomes when we look at the pathology and therefore it can’t be as Nora just put it, that Mendelian P. It can’t be just that one thing that’s causing the same thing because we get such breadth of symptoms and histological pathology. So, it was really nice to hear somebody like that say it on stage whilst talking about his model system, which is heavily based on synuclein, which just provided a nice perspective.

The other great thing was as well as I say, as well as the data that he was doing and showing, which was really interesting with the infections and bladder infections, UTI maybe, being one of the places where things like MSA could be stemming from, et cetera, was his as assertions on two fronts. The first is we don’t want to just drive towards the end point of histopathology all the time. Sometimes progression is the key and coming in and looking at my particular work and angles, perhaps I’m biased, but trying to look at progression and progressive models and trying to mimic the disorder in general rather than just to hurry to the end point is quite nice to hear because he had a model which needed a lot of time before it developed any sort of histological pathology. And the journals were perhaps a little hasty to reject work or to question his work, which brings me onto my second point in that he was quite clear with his viewpoints on keeping postdocs waiting for 18, 20 months on decision makings of journals just because somebody wanted to do everything slightly to the right again in a mouse model and correct it.

Having seen that this already took a long time and perhaps not trying to look for a paper that explains everything in one foul swoop and instead maybe perhaps allowing people to break up their data and seeing it for the merit of what is being presented at the time. And I thought that was brave and it was also something that people wanted to or needed to hear. So, his talk, to me spoke on multiple different levels, not just on data, but about how the concept and the culture of science should perhaps be being changed. So, it was really lovely just to hear that plenary talk. It was great.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It’s always great when you come away from a talk or a session not just taking away the scientific content, but these are the things that you can then take away and apply in your work life as well. I think for me, one of the sessions that I really enjoyed was the one on neurovascular contributions to dementia. So, understanding how changes to blood flow in the brain might have a role in the onset of and progression of certain neurogen diseases like Alzheimer’s and how that can then have particular implications for potential treatments. And I found that what really stuck out for me in that session was how we had early career researchers speaking alongside really eminent distinguished professors and them sharing a platform. I thought that that was really nice to see. And also bringing early career researchers on to co-chair these sessions as well and co-organize them. I thought that was really nice to see.

So, it was really exciting to see Bertha, who’s also one of our Dementia Researcher bloggers and she was talking about her PhD research. But we in the same session had Professor Edith Hamel from McGill University and I just thought it was really nice to see them sharing a platform together and talking about the same topic. And I think it was the first time I’d ever seen anybody get a round of applause at the start of their talk because Professor Hamel is so distinguished in her area and she had a round of applause at the start of her talk, which I thought was quite funny. I was like, imagine if I get there in my career where I’m applauded just by existing. That was quite exciting to see.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Coming on stage like a rock star.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Exactly.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Yeah, that’s amazing.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It’s what we all strive for, right?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Exactly. We can only dream.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

But then I think as well, something aside from the scientific content that stuck out for me, did anybody go to the peer review section? And when I said pier, for anyone that’s listening, it was spelled P-I-E-R because obviously we were at the seaside. So, did anybody go to that session? Because I remember walking past the conference the day before it opened and seeing these kinds of fairground tents through the window and I was thinking, what are they doing in there? So, did anybody attend that and want to explain to our listeners what that was? Dorothy, did you go to the peer review?

Dr Dorothy Tse:

I did. It was great fun. So first of all, it’s very colorful. I’m just trying to describe it, it’s very colorful. It’s like in a circus, I don’t know, is it the word, right? Yes. Yeah. And I found it amazing. So, you did it with Susanna Walker who’s deliverable neuroscience group lead. So first of all, we need to hook a duck. And at the bottom of the duck, there are different topics, there’s important topics in the neuroscience field. So, let’s just say for example, the topic I did was how do we actually inference the policy about neuroscience? Or let’s just say if there’s not enough funding, what can we do about it? So, there are different topics, important topics. And then we have to do some activities, like throw a ball towards some coconuts.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I think it’s called a coconut shy.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Coconut shy, yeah.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Yeah.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Yes, that’s probably it. And it’s great. It’s great fun. So, we done a lot of activities and in the end, I found it nice that we got to add some water to a tank. So, every neuroscientist takes a small step, and we’ll make a bigger step. So, the idea is that we got to make the floating brain out from the spec tank. So, each of us contributed a little bit of a small step and then together we took a big step. What about for those of you who went there? Do you feel this similar thing?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I briefly went there and engaged in the end, like you said, you explained it wonderfully. It was just really good to have a bit of fun and stimulate talking points and defunding the NHS on how the NHS and more interaction with it would be good for neuroscience and neuroscientific research. And I think you did a wonderful do job, Dorothy, of describing it. It was a bit of fun, but a way of stimulating some very real topics and real conversations that should be being had by neuroscientists on a regular basis. Just not ominous at all, but did you hear that giant tank at the very end, it shattered, and all the water came out? So, there was a mad dash to try and sort that out literally just before the last session, I think. And it just shattered, and all the water started spilling out. That’s nothing to say that we are not to get stronger together and we’re not doing… It’s not going to come crashing too well, but it was a bit of fun ’cause it was literally all hands to the pump. But it was interesting.

Dr Charlie Arber:

We can break down barriers together, right?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

There you go. Brilliant, Charlie. Nice one.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It’s just how we frame it. It just shows the power of neuroscientists when we come together to solve these issues.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I like that. We’ll feed that back.

Dr Nora Bengoa-Vergniory:

Well said. Well done. Nicely put.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It’s kind of a good way to end this podcast on, I think. And it was a lot of fun. I’ve never seen anything like that at any conference that I’ve been to, and it was a really good way to stimulate discussion because people were just naturally drawn to see what’s this big circus tent is and for what are all these games here? And it was a lot of fun and a really great way to have those discussions on various topics. So, I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for today. However, if you want to continue to catch up or if you’re interested in knowing more about the events or watching some of the recorded sessions, head to bna.org.uk. The next event will be in April 2025 and is heading to Liverpool. So, we hope to see you there. I would like to thank our incredible guests. So, we’ve got Dr. Charlie Arber, Dr. Dorothy Tse, Dr. Dayne Beccano-Kelly, and Dr. Nora Bengoa. I’m Dr. Kamar Ameen-Ali, and you’ve been listening to the Dementia Researcher podcast. Bye everyone.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Bye. Thanks. Bye.

Dr Charlie Arber:

Thanks a lot. Bye.

Dr Dorothy Tse:

Bye.

Voice Over:

Brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society & Race Against Dementia, and the Alzheimer’s Association, bringing you research, news, career tips, and support.

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