Hi there, and welcome to the Spectrum community newsletter! Last week, we spent most of our time at the Society for Neuroscience Global Connectome 2021 conference. We published more than 30 stories, which you can check out here.

Thanks to everyone who attended our virtual social, too! We had a great time talking to all of you, and we hope you got to know us a little better as well.

Let’s dive into what people on social media thought about the conference — and its virtual format.

Postdoctoral research fellow Emily Rothwell, like most of us, enjoyed the more casual dress code.

Well, I never thought I’d give a poster at SfN in my sweatpants, but the pandemic phase of science is full of surprises! #SfNConnectome21

— Emily Rothwell (@ESRothwellPhD) January 13, 2021

Behavioral neuroscientist Becky Fallon was glad to be getting enough sleep during SfN, a new experience for her.

Last day of #SfNConnectome21. SfN with full nights of sleep ???? is a new experience! Aiming to hit 20 posters today (share yours below!) and make it to the #neuralcircuits talk at 1:15. Saving the #pain and #glia talks for a rewatch later.

In the @inscopix booth now! Come visit.

— Becky Fallon (@sciencebaeBF) January 13, 2021

Graduate student Lyla El-Fayomi compared being able to attend multiple sessions scheduled for the same time to Hermione Granger’s time turner from the Harry Potter book series.

Anybody remember the time-turner Hermione used to attend Hogwarts classes w/conflicting schedules? That’s been me at #SfNConnectome21, happily exploiting the fact that their video players store 3.5 hours of talks at a time! This makes watching concurrent sessions possible ????

— Lyla El-Fayomi (@LylaElfay) January 13, 2021

Many people had good things to say about the “Diversity Builds a Better Neuroscience” session with Angeline Dukes, Jibran Y. Khokar and Steve Ramirez.

really appreciated #SfNConnectome21 “Diversity Builds a Better Neuroscience” with @FutureDrDukes @DrJKhokhar @okaysteve and the candid questions/discussion points in the chat. neuroscience is becoming so diverse and vibrant – academia needs to step up to do right by us all.

— M. Matthews, PhD (genius adj) (@PhDeez) January 13, 2021

A fantastic workshop to attend! I highly suggest everyone checks this out I believe it will be available for several months online

— Dr. John Hernandez (Black Lives Matter!!) (@Dentategyro1) January 13, 2021

Trying to contain my enthusiasm following the **fantastic** session ft. @DrJKhokhar, @FutureDrDukes, @okaysteve, & Dr. Lisa Savage on diversity in neuroscience. Impossible to pull just one quote. Will formulate my notes tmrw and post a hefty thread! ???? #SfNConnectome21

— Lyla El-Fayomi (@LylaElfay) January 13, 2021

You can check out our podcast episode on the topic here.

One person who attended SfN Global Connectome even noticed that there was a “strong presence of women.”

I’ve been interested to note the strong presence of women at #SfNConnectome21 . At the first talk I attended, all speakers and mods were women, and every question in the Q&A was asked by a woman.

— Saffron Whiskeybiscuit | 史蒂夫 (@stevejohnryan) January 13, 2021

However, there were some drawbacks to a virtual conference. Some people lamented being unable to attend sessions because they were working on their research or otherwise occupied.

I’ve missed all of #SfNConnectome21 sessions so far (and will miss them tomorrow) because I’ve been stuck in lab. One major disadvantage of virtual conferences that we don’t talk about. Hopefully I will have time to look at posters. I’m super bummed ????

— Dr. Nicole Schartz, PhD (@NicoleDSchartz) January 13, 2021

Finding it hard to give my full attention to #SFNconnectome21 this year, but an absolute highlight for me was the talk given by @TrackingActions on day1 discussing motor control & #DeepLabCut – what an incredible tool. Next @UBC_BrainLab meeting is going to be !!! @CRubino11

— Sarah Kraeutner, PhD (@DrKraeutner) January 13, 2021

will look it over for sure. It was a brutal week with, among other things, the start of the teaching semester for us. So I had almost no time to check things out live. Eager to get back to #SfNConnectome21 and check out a lot of great science.

— Mitch Roitman (@MitchRoitman) January 15, 2021

And @mariajoseoc2 said she missed the rush and the face-to-face interactions that happen during regular conferences.

#SfNConnectome21 is not the same as an actual meeting, missing all the rush and people #SfNathome pic.twitter.com/4KXTIubQlO

— mariajoseoc (@mariajoseoc2) January 12, 2021

If you didn’t get a chance to attend or watch all the presentations you wanted, you can still register and access all of the posters and sessions on demand for the next few months.

#SfNConnectome21 is not the same as an actual meeting, missing all the rush and people #SfNathome pic.twitter.com/4KXTIubQlO

— mariajoseoc (@mariajoseoc2) January 12, 2021

Thanks for reading this week! If you have any questions or comments about this edition of the Spectrum community newsletter, feel free to send them to [email protected] or tweet me. See you next week!