The Third Champalimaud Neuroscience Symposium started yesterday (Sep 25th) evening with a welcome reception to all participants. Hundreds of scientists from across the world gathered for this unique opportunity to hear talks from leading scientists and share their work with their colleagues in the exceptional setting of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown.

The Portuguese and international participants of the third Champalimaud Neuroscience Symposium have enjoyed excellent talks, posters, discussions and social events. The general atmosphere of the meeting was intimate and relaxed with invited speakers and participants speaking informally during the entire meeting.

Was the research of Richard Axel the inspiration for Woody Allen’s movie “Sleeper”?

Why do we associate particular smells to strong emotions?

Are oenophiles “smell geniuses”?

Nobel Laureate, Richard Axel, the keynote speaker of this year’s Champalimaud Neuroscience Symposium, answered these and other questions in his interview with Sábado magazine.

New discovery, from Carolina Doran, INDP 2010 student, shows for the first time that ants are just as eager as humans to find a great place to live.

We’ve all been there. The apartment is a bit too small; the heating doesn’t work so well, but is it time to make a move?

As hundreds of teachers streamed into Pavilhão do Conhecimento last Friday night (October 18th) for Teacher’s Night, a group of volunteers from the CNP stood prepared. Armed with four cockroach legs, a spike box, auditory and optical illusions, an electromyogram (EMG), 8 pairs of toothpicks and one enormous play-dough neuron.

Results of the Jury Selection Award of the video contest ‘Invest in Our Future – Invest in Science’ are finally in!

Why Does Science Matter?

and

When You Think About Science…

This completes our set of three winners, with the most liked on Facebook winner

Symposium invited speaker, Steven Reppert, tells all about the spectacular fall migration of monarch butterflies to PÚBLICO

“Butterflies are really cool, because we can manipulate their behavior.” – tells Steven Reppert to PÚBLICO newspaper.

Last week, on October 24-25, the 10th National Conference of Ethology took place at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, bringing together more than 100 participants from a wide range of specialties including ecology, evolution, development, physiology, psychology and neuroscience.

The conference programme consisted of two full days of scientific discussions, poster sessions and talks. Four presentations were selected as winners.

Next year, 2014, was chosen to be the year of the brain in Europe, with the goal of communicating to the general public scientific concepts in neuroscience and increasing awareness to neural disorders and diseases. It has quickly gained significant support from over 200 organisations, representing patients, health care professionals, industries in all areas of brain disorders and scientific communities.

Zach Mainen was recently interviewed by weekly Portuguese newspaper Expresso and the result will make you smile… and might even make you feel happier! Yes, you can programme your brain to be happier and that only depends on you.

The topic of this interview was happiness but Zach Mainen also talked about rewards, Facebook, social sciences and his (happy) life in Portugal!

Read all here (PT)