Conference: Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 49th Annual Meeting, October 19–23, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Conference Highlight: Advances in human neuronal electrophysiology and modeling highlighted at the 49th Annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting
Conference Summary:
The SfN meeting is perennially one of the largest academic conferences in the world, and this year nearly thirty thousand neuroscientists were present in Chicago. The topics presented at the meeting are correspondingly wide-ranging, covering every corner of the broad field of neuroscience; indeed, there is typically no single “theme” to meetings of this size, leaving it to attendees to seek out topics of interest amidst a sea of presentations and posters. One topic gaining more attention at this conference is the study of human neurons via single-neuron electrophysiological experiments, given the increasing availability of human brain tissue. Correspondingly, the computational modeling of distinctly human neurons is also a growing field that faces unique challenges. Multiple Krembil researchers presented posters on these topics at SfN this year.
Indeed, Krembil is one of a small but growing number of labs that can perform the necessary electrophysiological experiments on human neurons to motivate the generation of human neuron models. The Allen Institute is another such lab, and had a strong presence at the SfN conference. Interestingly, poster presentations from this group showed that human neurons have increased variability in key properties when compared to rodent neurons, a result validated by work at Krembil. When creating computational models of these neurons, the Allen Institute used their SfN presentation to highlight their “algorithmic” approach that allows for the generation of a large set of models in reasonable time frames. In both the work presented by Krembil and Allen Institute researchers, it was clear that there are paramount differences between similarly classified human and rodent neurons. This is a key result for neuroscientists, as it provides evidence that some of the differences between the human and rodent brain can be attributed to differences at the neuronal level.