Champalimaud

Neuroscience in Portugal? Yes!


The Champalimaud Centre of the Unknown held its first symposium with a very balanced mixture of topics, ranging from theoretical neuroscience to physiology, molecular neuroscience and behaviour - and from annelids, lampreys, flies, mosquitos, mice, rats, monkeys and humans. Birds were missing, but I had at least a poster as well as there were posters on zebrafish, grasshoppers, c. elegans and some other rare model species. What was most impressive? Many good talks, Antonio Damasio, but also Daniel Wolperts and Detlev Arendts talk were inspiring. Gyorgy Buszaki had some data on place cells losing the temporal information under cannabinoids - need to check that in our PPC-EC study. Who knows, maybe we got the reverse, intact time but no place information? And then there was Alcino Silva on memory allocation. Had some fun discussing with him the memorising method of loci. Even have an idea how to test it, so I should contact his colleague. So, yes Champalimaud should be on the radar - great architecture and surely also soon great science popping out.