System-Specific Activity in Response to Inhaled Cannabis sativa: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study in Awake Male Mice

Conference Travel Fund Blog Post by James Coleman COS ’21

My first Society for Neuroscience conference was an absolutely incredible adventure. Despite the initial overwhelming experience of walking through the packed poster sessions and vendor booths, I quickly adapted to the chaos and loved every minute of it.

Although Sunday was the night of my poster presentation, I felt a surprising lack of anxiety leading up to it. I knew the research inside and out, and I felt passionate about sharing the results from my acute cannabis exposure study. While most people who stopped by my poster would ask relatively simple questions I could answer with ease, I was feeling ready for a challenge just when a researcher from the NIH stopped by. Not only did he asked me about the reasons behind choosing to look at certain brain regions, but he also had questions about the statistical methods we used to analyze MRI data. I answered using the knowledge I had built upon from co-op and class, but I admitted I’m still not a statistics expert as of yet.

After my poster session was over, I made full use of the rest of the conference by attending my peers’ poster sessions and numerous talks. Xuezhu, a PhD student in my lab, presented a fantastic poster on the effects of circadian rhythm on the glymphatic system. One talk I attended was on limitations of animal models in studies of Alzheimer’s Disease, while another was about the molecular action of hallucinogenic drugs. I believe that attending this conference helped me gain presentation experience that will be critical to my future success as a scientist. Not only was I fortunate enough to make meaningful connections with fellow neuroscientists, but I was able to see first-hand the importance of sharing scientific discovery and feel the impact of being a part of that awe-inspiring process.