Plastic Fantastic: Changing the Brain

Testing drugs for brain diseases is crucial before patients take them. To avoid animal testing, we can take skin samples from people and turn them into brain cells, like neurons, using specialized viruses and cell food. Scientists can then test drugs on these brain cells and if it shows promise, it's more likely to progress to clinical trials, increasing chances of successfully treating disease. Join us to explore a skin cell’s journey to becoming a brain cell in the lab!

Damage to our DNA, the blueprint for all life, is a known cause of diseases such as cancer and dementia. But could it also contribute to age-related hearing loss? In this talk, I will explore our current understanding and share findings from my own research.

Psychedelics can profoundly change perception and consciousness—but what’s actually happening in the brain? Brain scans (fMRI) show widespread changes in connectivity, but to truly understand these effects, we need to zoom in on individual neurons. This talk explores how invasive recordings help uncover what’s happening at a microscopic level to create these whole-brain effects. Join me to discover how psychedelics transform brain activity—and what that might mean for understanding the mind.