Meeting Reports: Neuronal Ensembles TCCI Meeting Report

Summary

On Wednesday, May 4th, 2022, a group of esteemed scientists and an audience of hundreds gathered on Zoom to attend Neuronal Ensembles 2022 – a symposium put on by the NeuroTechnology Center at Columbia University and generously sponsored by the Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute. Neuronal Ensembles 2022 was the 15th meeting the NeuroTechnology Center has presented, and the second Neuronal Ensembles meeting (the first was in 2021). The NeuroTechnology Center at Columbia is less a physical place than it is a combination of ideology and mission. Founded in response to President Obama’s BRAIN initiative, the NeuroTechnology Center was created by Columbia University in 2014. The NTC itself is a bit of a renaissance group, as it includes scientists and academics alike from a variety of disciplines, such as the Columbia School of Arts and Sciences (A&S), the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the Zuckerman Mind, Brain, and Behavior Institute (Z-MBBI), and the Kavli Institute for Brain Science. This group includes biologists, chemists, neuroscientists, engineers, computer scientists, and physicists among others. However, the NTC is united around a common goal – to better understand how the brain works. Thus, the NTC understands that the best way to comprehend something as massive and complex as the brain is to include as many perspectives as possible. Neuronal Ensembles 2022 was evidence of this mission made manifest. Scientists from universities and research groups all around the world presented on topics as different as understanding zebrafish spatial reasoning using VR and utilizing new microscopy techniques to better visualize neuronal activity.

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