I’ve two favourite components of any INS convention: The agora of poster classes and The Birch Lecture (named for Herbert Birch). The Benton and – now – the Satz Awards are nostalgic reminders. Lastly, Plenary C seems to be fascinating: “Technology of New Hippocampal Neurons within the Grownup Mind: Implications for Psychological Well being”, as does Invited Symposium 3: “World Neuroscience: Influence of Tradition, Sources, and Schooling”.
I’ve all the time tracked the The Birch Lecture. Herbert G. Birch was, from all accounts, a beautiful particular person and a unprecedented trainer. Once I was an undergraduate scholar, I acquired mentoring in developmental biopsychology from a number of of his colleagues and college students (Susan Fleischer, Tina Moreau, and Gerald Turkewitz). I labored as a scholar with rat fashions of perinatal malnutrition, which was a methodological offshoot of his lengthy curiosity in malnutrition and poverty. My MA thesis was based mostly on his groundbreaking work exploring neonatal lateralization. He died a variety of years earlier than any of this, however I all the time felt a connection to his work. (Others could know him higher from his work with Chess and Thomas on temperament and The New York Longitudinal Examine). Allan Mirsky, a scholar of his, spoke fondly of Herbert Birch in his 2001 NIH Oral Historical past interview, really introduced a Birch Lecture at an earlier INS (Pittsburgh, if reminiscence serves), and wrote the homage abstracted beneath [click on image to enlarge it]
