14th Canadian-IBRO School for Neuroscience

The 14th Canadia-IBRO School for Neuroscience was held virtually in May 2021. The theme of this year’s school was Development, Plasticity, and Repair of Neural Circuits. We had planned to offer this School in May 2020, but in March 2020, we were forced to postpone the School because of the pandemic. In preparation for the 2020 School, the School’s organizing committee, consisting of E. Cooper, D. Ragsdale, M. Vollrath, A.L. Padjen, A, Krishnaswamy, M. Hendricks, and A. Aguayo, in consultation with members of the IBRO Regional Committees for Africa (ARC) and Latin America (LARC), had selected 14 students from 154 applicants. These students included graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and Faculty Lecturers who reside in Morocco, Egypt, Cameroon, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. The selection committees gave priority to candidates: a) who had research experience in development, plasticity and/or repair of the nervous system; and b) who had the potential to become independent scientists.
The School had four major components: 1) Lectures; 2) Posters and 10-minute talks, 3) Professional development, and 4) Hands-on labs. Each component is described in more detail below. We used a secure website, myCourses, to post pre-recorded lectures and related scientific articles, material relevant to the hands-on lab, student posters, and to communicate with one another during the School. The School met over Zoom every Monday through Saturday from May 3rd to May 29th for 1-1.5 hr. All live Zoom sessions were recorded and posted on myCourses.
The organizing committee invited 9 internationally-renown scientists to upload a pre-recorded lecture and then meet on Zoom to discuss topics related to their lectures. The lectures included: Dr. Alyson Fournier: “Axon guidance and regeneration”; Dr. Yang Zhou: “Using CRISPR to investigate autism”; . Dr. A. Peterson: “Oligodendrocytes, myelination, and glial plasticity”; Dr. M. Brandon: “Plasticity of neural circuits”; Dr. R. Sharif: “Somatosensory systems, mechanosensitive channels, and pain”; Dr. M. Hendricks: “Neural circuits in model organisms“; Dr. T. Ohyama: “Neural development and behavior of drosophila larvae“; Dr. T. Kennedy: “Neural development and bioengineering“; and, Dr. Hongqui Zeng, Executive Vice President and Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science: “Multidisciplinary research to map neural circuits“.

The School also included Zoom sessions on “What makes an effective Poster’, ‘How to give an effective 10-minute research talk’, and ‘How to write effective abstracts and scientific manuscripts’. Over the month, each student presented their poster, gave a 10-minute talk, and received feedback on their abstracts. The School also had sessions on Professional Development that included discussions on career development, and ethics. All students submitted an abstract and will present her/his poster at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Annual meeting, which will be held virtually this year at the end of August. The School will meet over Zoom during the meeting.

In addition, the School had a ‘Hands-on’ lab component, where students were taught how to analyze video-recoded data using DeepLabCut, a software package that uses machine-learning to provide an estimation of animal behavior while performing various tasks. The goal was to have students use DeepLapCut to analyze pre-recoded videos of animal behavior. Then, students would write user-specific computer code in Python to modify DeepLapCut and analyze their own data. The goal’s first part went well, however, technical difficulties made achieving the second part challenging.

This School was highly successfully. The students commented: “I think that the dynamics of 1 hour of previous lectures and materials and 1 hour of discussion in a live zoom session was great because we could think about our questions in advance.”; “I really enjoyed the course, the scientific content and the possibility to listen the pre-recorded talks, which offers us the opportunity to listen each of them with greater detail.”; “The virtual Lab was so interesting.”; “the most difficult part of making the school virtually was the part of the “hands-on Lab” experience, but I also think that they managed to make it a great experience virtually. I hadn't had a lot of experience in using python or programming so I think it was very useful to learn about it. I hope the school’s committee offers this year’s students an in-person lab course at some point in the next year.”
    
This school has received support from IBRO and from various institutions, departments and organizations in Canada, including: the Canadian Association of Neuroscience; Department of Neurology, McGill University; Montreal Neurological Institute; and Canadian Institute for Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction. The School is particularly grateful to McGill University for allowing us to use myCourses for this year’s school.