Integrate and Fire x CAN 2026 Satellite Symposium

Registrations closing soon!

Will close on the following dates, or after 100 registrations (whichever comes first).
Speed Networking: Thursday May 14th 11:59 PM
General Registration: Thursday May 14th 11:59PM

Confirmed seminars and speaker lineup below!

Full program abstracts coming soon. Full schedule here.

Rethinking the Stressed Brain
Fear, anxiety, depression. We know these states intimately, yet the circuits that generate them continue to surprise us. What if the real story lies in unexpected cell types, overlooked neuromodulators, or entirely new ways of thinking about vulnerability and resilience? This session explores the cellular and molecular logic of emotional regulation, and what emerging findings reveal about the limits of our current treatments.

• Maryia Bairachnaya, PhD (Giros Lab; McGill University)
  Circuit-specific noradrenergic dynamics are associated with stress susceptibility in a learned helplessness model

• Houaria Adaïdi (Stellwagen Lab; McGill University)

  Microglial TNF signaling is required for behavioral and cognitive deficits in a rodent model of post-traumatic stress disorder

• Ossama Ghenissa (Murphy-Royal Lab; Université de Montréal)

  Basolateral amygdala astrocytes encode anxiety states

• Angela Zolis (Lambe Lab; University of Toronto)

  When calcium fails to predict plasticity: Improving theta burst stimulation for vulnerable circuits

Deciphering the Hidden Mind
What the brain shows us is rarely the whole story. Behind every decision, feeling, and brain scan is a hidden state; a latent logic that drives what we observe but resists direct measurement. How do we get at what the mind is actually doing? This session explores how neuroscientists are learning to infer hidden mental states from the signals the brain leaves behind, pushing our understanding of neuroscience beyond the observable.

• Meriam Zid (Ebitz Lab; Université de Montréal)

  Monkeys choose to make mistakes

• Darius Valevicius (Taschereau-Dumouchel Lab; Université de Montréal)
  Closed-loop synthetic image evolution for affective neuroscience

• Tamires Marcal (Evans Lab; McGill University)

  Forecasting brain states in movie-watching with Dynamic Functional Connectivity

• Kian Godhwani (Benrimoh Lab; McGill University)

  Echoing Tides: A video game for psychosis risk screening

Architects of Cognition
How we learn, what we remember, and how we create are as much the products of architecture as they are of experience. From genes to networks, the brain arrives with structure, and that structure influences cognition in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. This session asks how far that architecture goes, and what it leaves for experience to write with.

• Chiara Bramati (Di Cristo Lab; Université de Montréal)
  Human-specific gene SRGAP2C improves learning by promoting information-seeking

• Javad Karimi, PhD (Brandon Lab; McGill University)

  An intrinsic evolving hippocampal scaffold guides the encoding of novel spatial memories

• Sofiya Zbaranska (Josselyn Lab; University of Toronto)

  Telling Friends from Foes: Contributions of the medial amygdala to social memory

Full event details are available on our website and symposium page

Contact ifss.ipn@mcgill.ca for inquiries.