CNS 2025 Annual Meeting | Conference Videos
Opening Ceremonies and Keynote Address - Adolescent Brain Development: The Importance of Connections
Adriana Galván, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
Adolescence is a special period of development. Young people ages 10-24 reach important developmental milestones during this time of life during which they explore, grow, and connect. The neurodevelopmental changes that occur during adolescence support these developmental changes. As revealed from neuroscience research, the adolescent brain exhibits significant plasticity and undergoes an important period of connectivity—strengthening of brain pathways—that reflect the increasing connections adolescents have with their peers, families and communities. This talk will provide an overview of brain development, current understanding of adolescent neuroscience, and an opportunity to discuss how this research may be useful in supporting system-impacted youth.
The 31st Annual George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience (GAM) - The Hidden Benefits of Sleep and Potential Pathways for Amplifying Them
Ken Paller, Ph.D., rofessor of Psychology, Northwestern University
Many people don’t appreciate the full range of sleep’s benefits (beyond that its nice not to be sleepy). From the first-person perspective, it may even feel like your brain is switched off during sleep, resting in a dormant state punctuated only by the occasional dream. In fact, brain activity continues through all sleep stages. Why is the sleeping brain so active? One critical overnight function is to move memory consolidation forward. This happens when newly acquired information is gradually integrated within existing storage networks. The memories accessed also change in various ways. A rich body of evidence now supports the view that memories are reactivated and changed during sleep without any first-person awareness of that happening. This hidden work of overnight memory reactivation can also enhance creativity and problem-solving. A related idea with important clinical implications is that sleep-based memory reactivation may influence the extent to which a night of sleep improves or degrades psychological well-being. Contemporary research in this area now seeks to both understand and potentially amplify the various cognitive benefits of sleep. Supplementing standard recommendations for sleep hygiene, there may be many tactics for nudging sleep physiology in positive directions, including some that can be engaged in the home using wearable technology. Applying a cognitive neuroscience approach to investigating sleep, including dreaming and other cognitive dimensions of sleep, can thus inspire the development of valuable strategies to help people gain more from — and genuinely appreciate — their slumber.
The 14th Annual Distinguished Career Contributions Award (DCC) - Cognitive Control: From Interacting Hemispheres to Purging Thoughts
Marie T. Banich, Ph.D., Institute of Cognitive Science, Dept. of Psychology & Neuroscience Executive Director, Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium at the University of Colorado at Boulder
In this talk, I will discuss the arc of my research program which has examined the neural processes that underlie cognitive control and executive function. As my research began before the widespread use of human brain imaging, my talk begins with my early studies examining how interacting brain regions work to increase our mental processing capacity. With the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), my focus shifted to investigating the separate roles of lateral and medial brain regions in cognitive control. Our results suggested that lateral regions are involved in setting task goals while medial regions mediate later stage or response-related aspects of control. I will discuss how these systems interact, are affected by development and can vary based on individual characteristics, such as symptoms related to anxiety and depression. The bulk of the talk will focus on cognitive control mechanisms that serve to displace and purge information from working memory. This work is motivated by the fact that most psychiatric disorders are characterized by an inability to remove specific thoughts from working memory, such as negative thoughts about the self, or the potential threat of future harm. I will show how our research team has used fMRI to actively track the removal of information from working memory, allowing us to see thoughts vanish in real time. Evidence will be presented that demonstrates the neural and psychological specificity of different removal operations including switching to another thought, suppressing one particular thought, or clearing the mind of all thought. I will discuss how the brain represents these operations, their consequences for long-term retention of information, and how these operations act differentially on positive vs. negative thoughts. The talk will conclude by considering the implications of this research for interventions ranging from behavioral therapies to biofeedback.
Young Investigator Award Lecture - One stimulus, many interpretations: The neuroscience of subjective experience
Emily S. Finn, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
That the same sensory experience (e.g., a photograph, a video clip) can generate distinct, sometimes polar opposite, reactions in different people is obvious to anyone who lives in today’s society. When, how, and why do people diverge in their subjective interpretations of a stimulus? While high-level social scenarios, in contrast to basic perceptual information, are most likely to generate divergent interpretations across people, it has been challenging to elicit and quantify these interpretations in experimental settings. In this talk, I will cover recent work in my lab using behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational approaches to understand how features of individuals, features of external input, and brain activity interact to give rise to nuanced percepts of complex social information.
