The start of a joke I would never want to hear could possibly go something like this: 30,000 neuroscientists walk into a convention center...  While any imaginable punch line could and should be classified as a crime against humanity, the lead-in is useful in that it grossly describes my attendance and presentation at the 38th Annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting.  The trip was destined from the beginning to be a bit special.  You see I am currently halfway through a six-month study abroad in Germany, and having been gone for so long already, the voyage was beset with the swirling emotions of a proper homecoming.  And what a homecoming it was; various travel mishaps made a simple 10-hour pond-hop into a two-day long plane, train, and automobile (and foot and moving sidewalk) adventure.  This is a story in itself, but one better left untold for the moment in favor of a much more relevant one.

The meeting's sheer size alone was impressive; the attendees were enough to make even the cavernous DC Convention Center seem bustling and crowded.  The atmosphere was part stock exchange, part zoo, and part sleep-away camp.  It was all enough to make a first-time presenter like me absolutely electric with nervous excitement.  I should not need to tell you that "electric," "nervous," and "excitement" would all make great fodder for a head-slap-worthy neuroscience pun.

My poster was about the work I have been doing in Dr. Katalin Gothard's laboratory on ways to describe how monkeys look at other monkeys' faces.  We got at this question by showing images from a library of monkey faces to three monkeys.  While they sat and watched the images on a computer screen, we recorded their scanpaths, that is, eye movements across the image, with a video camera.  The rest involved spreading the data out on the table, picking at it, and rolling around in it for a while in an effort to figure out what the monkeys had done.  The ultimate goal is that once we can transform this rich, beautiful, but confusingly complex behavior into a couple of simple characteristic markers, we can play games with the monkey and see which, if any, of our markers change.  In addition, having a toolbox available to consider the precise manner in which a monkey explores a picture can add a layer of subtlety to a wide swath of studies.

Simply the parts of the face that the monkey chooses to visit tell part of the scanpath story.  On a grand average, the eyes come out as being an important feature, and when the monkey in the image is bearing his/her teeth, the mouth gets visited more often.  Another part of the story is told by the manner in which the eye moves in time.  For example, one monkey jumps between the eyes and mouth quickly and repeatedly, while another is more likely to pick a place and stare.  What is amazing is that despite the fact that one monkey is constantly whizzing around the image and one is giving the Clint Eastwood death-stare, when you consider many trials, they spend similar amounts of time attending to the eyes and mouth, respectively.

I was anxious to see whom, if anyone would come to see my work.  That was where the advantage of having so many neuroscientists in one place made itself evident.  With such a large audience, there was bound to be some subset of people with shared interests, and indeed, my poster had a fair number of visitors during my 4-hour presentation block.  Some were more interested in the eye movement side, some in the behavioral interpretation, and some I gather were just drawn to the pictures of monkey faces.  Contrary to my darkest fears, nobody visited with the sole purpose of tearing me to shreds, and many offered positive feedback and suggestions.  For me, this was one of the greatest benefits of attending the meeting; while I know and accept the fact that studying monkey scanpaths isn't the path to superstardom, it is heartening to know that people in the world of science think that what you do is interesting, worthwhile, and needed.

Apart from the meeting itself, there was also the excitement of being in Washington, D.C., which is in my opinion a suitably impressive capitol city.  Before our return flight, we managed a bit of sightseeing to the White House, the Washington Monument, and the Museum of Natural History to check out the dinosaurs.  Then I said goodbye to my coworkers and hopped a flight back to Germany with all the swirling emotions of a proper farewell.  From a scientific and personal perspective, the trip was a huge success, and I owe a huge thanks to the UBRP for helping make it possible.

Robert Gibboni, UBRPer in Dr. Katalin Gothard's lab, Physiology