Participating report of the 12th biennial Conference of CNS
Kai Li

Li Kai
Uemura Lab.D1
Graduateschool of Biostudies
Kyoto University

It was my great honor to be selected as a recipient of travel award to the 12th Biennial Conference of Chinese Neuroscience Society. On this July, I attended JNS Annual Meeting and met several young researchers from CNS who were invited by JNS. In response to that, CNS also encourages JNS members to participate in conference of CNS. As a young Chinese neuroscientist who is currently taking research training in Japan, I am glad to see the enhancing relationship between the two societies. Here, I would like to give a short participating report.

I attended the meeting held in Tianjin, China on October 13rd-15th and gave a poster presentation. This Biennial Conference is the largest national neuroscience meeting in China. This year, the attendance in Tianjin reached around 2500. It provided a forum for neuroscientists worldwide to present and discuss research in all areas of neurosciences. Thus most of the seminars and lectures were given in English, while participants mainly discussed in Chinese in the poster session, which was quite similar to situation in conference of JNS.

On the first day morning, with the help of CNS staff, I quickly finished my registration, got my conference pass and started to enjoy the meeting. Several different seminars were held simultaneously in distinct halls, I mainly listened to the ‘Ion Channel and Receptor’ according to my interests. There were also plenary lectures and special memorial lecture on the first day. One special session was the ‘HT Chang Young Neuroscientist Award Lecture and Award Ceremony’. This award was given in honor of Hsiang-Tung Chang, who did fundamental studies on the structure and function of the central nervous system and was regarded as one of founders of China’s neuroscience. The talks given by two award-winners, Dr. Xiaohui Zhang and Dr. Yongchun Yu, were very impressive and encouraging.

On the second day, I gave my poster presentation named ‘Elucidation of neural circuit mechanism integrating noxious stimulus and ambient temperature sensation in Drosophila’. Several participants stopped by my poster and questioned about the methods detail. Most of them were not Drosophila researchers, so I was happy to explain how Drosophila is an excellent model system to study structural and functional patterns of circuits and introduced them the cutting-edge genetic toolkit in this classic model animal. However, I was little disappointed since that very few participates were Drosophila researchers and I didn’t get very useful information for my current studies. Though, one surprise was that I met several acquaintances during the meeting. I met my university classmate whom I had not met for several years! We discussed his researches on fear memory in mice and also gossiped about our personal research life. I participated two seminars about learning and memory on third day. My previous supervisor in Tsinghua University hosted one of these and he also gave a talk about the dynamics of memory retrieval and consolidation. I was glad to see new progress in his lab.

The meeting didn’t offer us dinner. Since the venue, Social Hill Hotel and Conventions, is quite isolated, there were few restaurants around. So we had to go to the downtown for dinner by subway after meeting. The whole carriage was full of neuroscience researchers discussing their studies and life, which was interesting. The night view of Tianjin was wonderful and the dinner was delicious.

In the end, I have to appreciate both CNS and JNS for giving me this valuable opportunity to attend this exciting and inspiring Biennial Conference of CNS and share my primary research results. This experience in Tianjin strongly encourages me to get more progress in my future study.