Natália Madeira, PhD Student at the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology Lab, under the supervision of Rosalina Fonseca, has been awarded a Travel Grant to attend the 10th World Congress of Neuroscience International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) in Daegu, South Korea from September 21 – 25, 2019.
This grant has given the researcher the opportunity to attend IBRO and to present her research project entitled “Temporal Gating of Synaptic Competition in the Lateral Amygdala by Cannabinoid Receptor Modulation of the Thalamic Input”.
This project's main focus is on understanding how particular memories are stored and for that, Natália Madeira has studied heterosynaptic forms of plasticity between the cortical and thalamic afferents to the amygdala. The researcher discovered that cortical and thalamic afferents can engage in competition – a mechanism that is modulated by the endocannabinoid system. These results support the hypothesis that synaptic competition is a cellular mechanism to select events and promote memory selectivity.
For Natália Madeira “this grant will offer an excellent opportunity for expose my ideas, discuss them and, therefore, to expand my knowledge. Attending this conference will also provide me the possibility for getting inspiration in additional fields of neuroscience research. Being awarded with this travel grant was an honor and a recognition of our work.”
The main goal of this congress is to advance neuroscience research and communication among researchers worldwide. One of its most important features is supporting education of researchers who are starting their careers in developing countries.