It was a real pleasure working with @lisampmunoz.bsky.social over four days of science, laughs, new friendships, and catching up with old ones!
Hope to see you again in Boston or perhaps sooner in Cambridge!
To close the symposium, Regina Lapate extends the story past shock+picture lab pairings and into real life events: how our emotions influence the way we remember the timeline of our autobiographical memories.
Fascinating and very carefully conducted work into emotion-memory-time dynamics!
#CNS2026
Third speaker Joseph Dunsmoor~ with at least 4 fans in the audience (count me in too 🤣) asks:
What happens when you look at pictures while getting mildly electrocuted⚡️
Turns out shocks can shift when you think you saw the picture.
Great science but rough day for participant in that study! #CNS2026
Next up Andy Lee asking: do our emotions in terms of how intense they are and whether they are positive or negative may distort how we remember the time between past events?
As usual with emotions… it’s complicated!
#CNS2026
Kicking off the symposium on how emotion shapes our memory @danipalombo.bsky.social and her PhD student Chantelle Cocquyt by asking: does a reminder cue affect how you recall an emotional event differently if it comes before vs after it?
Turns out this research reveals order matters!
#CNS2026
Day 4: the final day of #CNS2026~
Join us this morning for the final poster session, 8-10 AM. One last chance to see lots of great posters and lively chats~ all the ingredients you need to start a chilly day in Vancouver with that dopamine spike!
Coffee and breakfast available ☕️
Congratulations @monicarosenb.bsky.social on your Young Investigator Award! Join us now for her #CNS2026 award talk, about neural signatures of sustained attention, with intro by @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social
Restaurant name: Salmon n’ Bannock (maps.app.goo.gl/CwteyS13QRKX...), it’s a super cozy spot serving authentic Canadian cuisine! Highly recommend!! #CNS2026
After a super hectic Day 2 #CNS2026, I kept Day 3 intentionally lighter~ fewer talks and more catching up!
Lovely lunch with some current members from my former lab @HKU
And a super memorable dinner with Jarrod Lewis-Peacock & Co. (@cjerinic.bsky.social) at a cozy family run restaurant (link 👇)
I’ve been having a great time at @cogneuronews.bsky.social !!
If you’ll be around for the final day of the meeting, come say hi during the last poster session (8-10am, Poster F34)! I’ll be sharing some new work on how dynamic memory control helps regulate intrusive thoughts!
Wrapping up the symposium on naturalistic paradigms @honglab.bsky.social sharing some cutting edge research from his lab into the brain mechanisms supporting prosocial and cooperative behaviours in rats!
#CNS2026
Now Nachum Ulanovsky joining remotely to take us into the social lives of bats 🦇
Apparently bats are not just tiny flying vampires🤣, instead they are very social animals!
Incredible research on how bat brains track as bats navigate in their colonies and their interactions with other bats! #CNS2026
Up next @avitalhahamy.bsky.social using machine learning to track reactivation of narratively rich events (movie clips, stories). The brain seems to reliably “replay” them at event boundaries i.e. right before next clip begins, hinting this replay helps us understand what just happened! #CNS2026 👇
Kicking off the Day 3 morning symposium on recent advances in naturalistic paradigms in neuroscience: Dominic Bach @bachlab.bsky.social presenting an immersive VR setup to study threat related behaviours like escape, avoidance, dynamic updating of goals. So cool and more on poster E96!! #CNS2026
After the epic welcome reception on Day 1, Day 2 wouldn’t be complete without great food hehe
Ended the night at a sushi bar after stumbling upon this spot (maps.app.goo.gl/viqbeAYbKdNg...) with some familiar and new faces~ and WOW Vancouver’s food scene has been incredibly good!!!
#CNS2026
#CNS2026 Day 2 reflection:
Brain = 🔋, Social battery = 🪫
Fantastic posters ✅
Passionate science chats ✅
Great talks ✅
Food+Friends ✅
And ending the day on an inspiring high: @theamygdaloid.bsky.social proving you can start in Business Administration… and still become a neuroscience legend! 👇
Ajay Satpute closed the symposium with a philosophy-of-science mic drop: if we go looking for neat, discrete emotions in the brain, we may just find what we assumed. He offered a constructivist twist by presenting evidence for variability in brain activations for the construct “fear” #CNS2026
Third up: Heini Saarimäki, continuing symposium’s focus on discrete emotion representations and pushing it further by examining how these patterns extend beyond the brain into the body.
Super cool findings on brain-body dynamics and how interoceptive signals influence emotional states! #CNS2026
Lovely catching up with @leemtllab.bsky.social and his group from @utoronto.ca over fantastic noodles! I’m honestly blown away by the quality and range of Asian food in Vancouver!
Day 2 lunch spot recommendation: maps.app.goo.gl/ogoYtqSYLAPh... (18 min walk from conference venue)
#CNS2026
Up next, Patrik Vuilleumier extending story of tracking our emotions in the brain also using movie clips and linking brain activity for discrete emotions to cognitive processes like motivation.
Tbh watching movie clips for science might be the best participant recruitment strategy ever! #CNS2026
Second symposium of the day, and one I’ve been most excited about: how our brains track emotions!
Kicking things off, Kevin LaBar shows how machine learning can decode discrete emotions from fMRI data while people watch movie clips! #CNS2026 🧵👇
Onto the final talk: Kevin Weiner is zooming in on the lateral PFC, using deep learning algorithms to identify cortical ridges and sulci. Amazing to see cutting-edge progress in using AI to augment neuroimaging data processing tasks that are so manually intensive! #CNS2026
Next up is Jinkang (Derrick) Wang diving into functional connectivity in the PFC of our closest evolutionary cousins: monkeys 🐒
Super cool and fine-grained look at how boundaries are organized in the monkey prefrontal cortex. #CNS2026 👇
At Invited Symposium 2 on precision mapping of prefrontal cortex (PFC), @moatazassem.bsky.social shares striking evidence of functionally distinct multiple-demand patches in PFC track category-selective images of objects vs faces vs letters vs other types of visual stimuli! #CNS2026
Grateful to everyone who stopped by my poster! So nice seeing both new and familiar faces ☺️ It was a joy to share the very first study from my PhD research on affective blunting!
Thanks for the great questions, feedback and encouragement~ it made the poster session so fun and enriching! #CNS2026
I know it’s early morning on a SUNDAY… and yes, some of us are still recovering from last night’s epic welcome reception 😅
But if you happen to be well caffeinated, wander over to today’s first poster session 8-10 AM! There are many amazing posters… and one I’m particularly fond of (B19) 👀
We went to Maruhachi Ramen (maps.app.goo.gl/THVQXasJxBbf...) near Central Library and a 10 minute walk from JW Marriott ☺️
Proof that good food + great conversations fuel good science #CNS2026 with @fredbergmann.bsky.social, Maxi Becker and Leonardo Pettini
Fantastic start to #CNS2026 at DataBlitz! Lots of cool findings already! One highlight for me: how differently people recall positive collective memories vs. personal memories, reflecting distinct functions of collectivistic vs individually experienced memory. Great talk: @signysheldon.bsky.social
Excited to be heading to #CNS2026 in Vancouver this weekend!
Come say hi if you’re around as I will be presenting some very promising results from the first completed study of my PhD work into affective blunting conducted @mrccbu.bsky.social ☺️
Poster Session B, March 8, 8-10 AM (Poster No. B19)
