Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition Funding Awarded to 7 Research Teams
Top row: Yao Chen, Michael Economo, Anna Schapiro, Megan Peters, Marcelo Mattar, Timothy Machado. 2nd row: Kate Hong, Lucas Pinto, Benjamin Scott, Daniel Burnston, Wilma Bainbridge. 3rd row: Bob Wilson, Phillip Rivera, Alison Weiss, Elizabeth McNeill, Maithe Arruda-Carvalho, Rosemary Bagot.
Seven collaborative teams of early career researchers have won funding for projects to advance understanding of the molecular or mechanistic processes that underlie memory and cognition in the second year of Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition initiative.
The initiative is sponsored by RCSA, the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), with additional award funding from The Kavli Foundation, the Walder Foundation, and the Azrieli Foundation. The 19 individual awards of $50,000 in direct costs will go to 17 researchers from a variety of institutions in the United States and Canada.
Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format aims to accelerate breakthroughs by stimulating intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community building around a scientific theme of global importance. Participants are selected from multiple disciplines, approaches and methodologies and are encouraged to form teams to propose high-risk, high-reward projects based on innovative ideas that emerge during the conference.
“Scialog is an attempt to promote research that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, forward-looking, and risk-taking,” said RCSA President & CEO Daniel Linzer. “Scialog creates an environment in which early career faculty can think big, share ideas, and talk about stretching the limits of what is possible.”
The conference, held October 12-15, 2023, in Tucson, Arizona, engaged participants in a series of conversations designed to build a community eager to share their expertise, discuss challenges and gaps in current knowledge, and devise new ways to probe the chemistry, biology, physics, and computational science that underlie memory and other cognitive processes.
Keynote speaker Jacob Hooker, Scientific Director, Lurie Center for Autism, and Director of Radiochemistry, Martinos Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, set the stage for brainstorming discussions with his talk, “Mapping Molecular Associations to Cognition with Neuroimaging.” He highlighted past and current uses of neuroimaging techniques to understand molecular components that may be associated with elements of cognitive processes, and offered his thoughts on advancements in neuroimaging that can help science achieve breakthroughs in the coming decade.
“We're in a new era of neuroimaging,” he said. “The last 10 or 15 years have been so technology-packed that we can see things in the human brain that were simply just not possible, or maybe even imaginable. You can look at functional imaging at much, much higher resolution now, and really start to bridge the gap between structure and function.”
In addition to Hooker, discussions were guided by an expert group of Facilitators including Adam Cohen, Harvard University; Jacqueline Gottlieb, Columbia University; Martin Gruebele, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Marina Picciotto, Yale University; and Adina Roskies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
The meeting also included brief talks by Scialog teams on the challenges, surprises, and successes encountered in the first year of projects that were funded in 2022.
“It's been so much fun to be able to collaborate with friends, and to try to begin to answer some of the questions that have been burning in my mind,” said panelist Kate Hong.
The following MBC teams will receive 2023 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards:
Yao Chen, Neuroscience, Washington University in Saint Louis
Michael Economo, Biomedical Engineering, Boston University
Illuminating the Molecular Mechanisms of Memory Formation During Behavior
Anna Schapiro, Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Megan Peters, Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine
Marcelo Mattar, Psychology, New York University
Investigating the Conscious Accessibility of Neural Replay
Timothy Machado, Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania
Kate Hong, Biological Sciences, Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Michael Economo, Biomedical Engineering, Boston University
FLEX: Fluorescent Light Examination of eXtensors (and Other Muscles)
Lucas Pinto, Neuroscience, Northwestern University
Benjamin Scott, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University
Yao Chen, Neuroscience, Washington University in Saint Louis
Understanding the Multiple Timescales of Neuromodulation Using Three Photon Instant FLIM
Daniel Burnston, Philosophy / Brain Institute, Tulane University
Wilma Bainbridge, Psychology, University of Chicago
Bob Wilson, Psychology, University of Arizona
Mapping Inner Worlds: Representational Spaces and Mental Life
Phillip Rivera, Biology, Macalester College
Alison Weiss, Neuroscience, Oregon Health & Science University
Elizabeth McNeill, Food Science and Human Nutrition, Iowa State University
The Mystery of Heavy Drinking: Exploring the Roots of Alcohol Dependency
Maithe Arruda-Carvalho, Psychology, University of Toronto
Rosemary Bagot, Psychology, McGill University
Leveraging Development to Reveal Molecular Mechanisms of Neural Circuit Divergence
The third and final meeting of Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition is scheduled for October 24-27, 2024.
