Forthcoming EPS Research Workshops

For information about conferences organised by EPS, see Meetings.

EPS-sponsored workshop: “Interactions Between Space, Time and Number: 20 Years of Research”

Why are the concepts of number, space, and time so tightly intertwined? Are babies and even animals innately equipped for thinking about them as related magnitudes? How are these interactions modified by culture and education? What are the brain mechanisms underlying them? Twenty years after the discovery of the ‘SNARC effect’, a workshop in Paris will review the state of our knowledge on these important issues. It takes place on 26 February at College de France and is co-organized by Stanislas Dehaene, Marco Zorzi, Samuel Shaki, and Martin Fischer.

There are 5 travel bursaries and 2 poster awards for students. Sponsorship was provided by College de France, Ecole de neuroscience and ESCOP, as well as EPS.

Full details can be found at: http://www.uni-potsdam.de/pecog/?q=node/355

BNA2013: Festival of Neuroscience 7-10 April 2013, The Barbican Centre, London

The earlybird deadline is 31st December 2012 (less than 4 weeks away), and EPS members can save up to £100 on their registration fee - don't miss out, register now.

We were pleased to see such a great response to the call for abstracts, and due to demand the abstract deadline has now been extended to 6th January 2013.  Please spread the word to your colleagues - everyone should have the chance to showcase their research at this unique neuroscience event.

The BNA2013: Festival of Neuroscience is hosted by the British Neuroscience Association in partnership with 18 learned societies with an interest in neuroscience - both basic and clinical research. 

Development is just one of the eight fascinating symposia themes being explored at the Festival of Neuroscience. 

Topics such as 'Early life stress and its long-term effects'  and 'The development of self-regulation' will be presented.

Development also features in the following plenary lecture:

Dame Uta Frith University College London 'Autism and Cognitive Development'

Details of all the plenary speakers can be found here.

Details of all the symposia themes can be found here. 

POSTER AND ABSTRACT SUBMISSION - NOW OPEN.

Don't miss out on this great opportunity for British Neuroscience, register and book your poster abstract today.

The BNA2013: Festival of Neuroscience will take place at the Barbican, one of London's leading arts venues. We are taking full advantage of this hub of entertainment and in parallel with the academic meeting the Wellcome Trust is co-ordinating a programme of events to capture the public's imagination and to share information about the brain and brain research.

Other Conference Announcements

Other Announcements

We are delighted to announce a one-day expert workshop "Intentional Inhibition: from motor suppression to self-control", to be held at University College London, on Wednesday 25th September 2013.  The meeting is organised by Patrick Haggard, Richard Ridderinkhoff and Marcel Brass, with funding from the European Science Foundation.Recent progress in both psychology and neuroscience confirm inhibiting action is just as important  as initiation of action.  Moreover, inhibition is an essential aspect of behaviour regulation and self-control, particularly in social contexts. Most studies of inhibition have involved external signals to inhibit, yet adult humans are assumed to possess the key capacity of internal cognitive control to inhibit actions, even when those actions appear superficially attractive.This will be the first international meeting to focus exclusively on intentional inhibition.  A series of short talks is given by eminent researchers across a range of relevant disciplines.  There will be a poster session for early career researchers.  Some travel bursaries are available.The workshop is hosted by the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and will take place in Queen Square in the heart of London.  There is a minimal charge to cover refreshments.For more information, including the list of confirmed speakers, and for pre-registration and abstract submission, please visit our site: http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/intentionalinhibition/

Members may be interested to join CDBU

The Council for the Defence of British Universities was launched last November (http://cdbu.org.uk/) with the following aims:

• To defend and enhance the character of British universities as places where students can develop their capacities to the full, where research and scholarship are pursued at the highest level, and where intellectual activity can be freely conducted without regard to its immediate economic benefit

• To urge that university education, both undergraduate and graduate, be accessible to all students who can benefit from it

• To maintain the principle that teaching and research are indispensable activities for a university and that one is not pursued at the expense of the other.

APPOINTMENTS TO ESRC COMMITTEE 2013

Dear Colleague

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) are currently seeking to appoint new members. 

Further details, including vacancy specifications and application forms are currently available on the ESRC website at:

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/vacancies.aspx

Applications, with a CV (no longer than two pages) and a Supporting Statement (for Committees only), should be submitted no later than 5.00pm on 18 March 2013 to:

Committee advice: Marzena Bien This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Committee applications: Greg Meredith This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

http://www.no-cuts-on-research.eu

The discussions at and around the next summit of the European Union heads of states and governments, which is scheduled for 22 and 23 November, will be decisive in determining the EU research budget for the next seven years. Several Member States are demanding severe cuts on the total EU budget and research will have to compete with other policy priorities.

This is a time when we, the scientific community, should act together and make our case to protect research funding, including that of the European Research Council (ERC), from cuts. Decisions will be prepared in discussions among politicians at the national level. All of us must look for opportunities to affect these decisions and send a strong signal to the Heads of State or Government.

An open letter signed by European Nobel laureates has been published in top European newspapers this week. The impact of this letter will be increased if it is followed by a mobilization of the national scientific communities.

I suggest we support these initiatives, for example, in the following ways:

• speak at events we may be attending to make the case for the ERC and the budget for Horizon2020 • use contacts that we or our colleagues may have in political parties or in the media to inform and mobilise our communities and others • ask the leaders of any professional society to which we belong to bring this call to action to the attention of the society’s members.

An online petition has been launched to keep the momentum going:

http://www.no-cuts-on-research.eu

I would like to ask you to sign it and to encourage your research group members and colleagues to do likewise. Note that in the past less than

30 000

scientists signed the largest petition for a scientific cause in Europe compared to the hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions from other groups of society. We must do better than that.

Please contact Wolfgang Eppenschwandtner, Executive Coordinator of the ISE ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ), if you have any questions or suggestions. We would be interested to hear about any actions you take, and in particular, any reactions you hear from politicians and policy makers.