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MSc student Brendan Sargent reflects on his experience at the Neuroscience Symposium last month and what he took away from the event.

Felicity Waite presenting at the Neuroscience Symposium
The 12th Annual Oxford Neuroscience Symposium was a great opportunity for everyone involved in neuroscience research across Oxford - from postgraduate students and early-career researchers to professors and department heads - to explore the cutting edge of the study of the brain. It was a fantastic day at the Mathematical Institute, with excellent talks and interesting discussion. 

Having been to several conferences over recent years, mostly clinically focussed, I was struck by two things during the jam-packed day: the translational nature of the work presented, and a strong sense of celebrating and showcasing the work taking place across Oxford.

It was exciting to see talks from a wide spectrum of academic areas within neuroscience, from animal model work to clinically focussed talks, and from proteomic and genomic research to population level research on huge collaborative datasets. This gave the audience a real sense that Oxford is an exceptional place to carry out this work, with the possibility of reaching across subfields’ typical boundaries and working with colleagues in other areas. Beyond that, it was interesting to see how different groups might attempt to tackle similar problems in different ways, offering potential to both improve diagnosis and treatment for patients, as well as approach answers to fundamental questions about the brain.

Read the full story on the Department of Psychiatry website.