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It was great to see both Emily Liu and Narayan Sankaran on stage at the 10th Annual BRAIN Initiative Conference.

Emily was one of eight Scholar Spotlight awardees selected to give a Lightning Talk of her abstract to the full meeting, immediately after NIH BRAIN Director John Ngai’s welcome. Then in the afternoon, Narayan spoke as part of a panel on music in the brain (and its potential therapeutic applications), presenting cutting-edge work on neural representations of melody in the brain.

Emily and Narayan will both be going on to faculty roles; Emily at the University of Colorado Department of Neurology, and Narayan helping to establish a new Neuroscience department close to home at the University of San Francisco, and aiming also to set up a neuroethics program within that department. Great work by both of them – so happy to see it recognized!

Today we went out for another game together at Oracle Park, and we were able to celebrate the return to the Bay Area of two Decision Lab alums, Clayton & Madhu. A few other Decision Lab alums came to join us for a mini-lab reunion: Ali, Cailin, and Celeste! It was great to see everyone and get updates on the great things that people have been up to since leaving the lab!

We’ve had a lot to celebrate in Decision Lab recently, with three great poster presentations, three newly-accepted publications, and decisions about exciting next steps for Brandon, Rea, and Narayan. We were extra-excited that Celeste was able to get away from duties in the hospital to join us!

Capping off a productive week of posters in the Decision Lab, Narayan Sankaran received a poster award at the International Neuroethics Society’s 2024 meeting in Baltimore for his poster, on “Disparate ethical responses to speech decoding research.” Narayan’s project is focused on (1) unpacking an ethical tension exhibited in many responses to the ongoing development of speech BCIs (brain-computer interfaces), between support for restoration and concerns about surveillance, and (2) drawing upon details of the neuroscience of speech and on community engagement to chart a path forward. Congrats also to Narayan on his upcoming faculty appointment at the University of San Francisco!

In my view, this year’s INS program was the most well-developed and engaging so far. In addition to exciting integrations with the arts, the program included illuminating international discussions (particularly with expertise from Japan and Latin America) and really thoughtful incorporation of considerations of society and the social sciences. Looking forward to next year in Munich!

This year the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting is in Denver, where Manizhe Eslami-Amirabadi and UCSF neurology resident Michael Trainer presented their work.

Manizhe presented “Financial activities and mismanagement by people with dementia as reported in a nationally representative caregiver survey,” which takes a new approach to estimating the impact of disease-related impairments in decision-making. Michael presented “Ethical shared decision-making for novel anti-amyloid therapies,” which applies prior work on tools for improving shared decision-making (mostly utilized so far in non-neurologic disorders) to the complex decisions facing clinicians, patients, and families regarding new biologically-based treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Congrats to both of them, and thanks to everyone who came out to ask questions and give feedback!

Today in place of our usual weekly code meeting, we instead were invited to present at a virtual meetup of the Bay Area Open Science Group, a community spanning UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. We had a fascinating discussion about open science and different norms across a wide range of scientific disciplines–at a health sciences university, we don’t often have the chance for such wide ranging discussions about rigor and method. And it was flattering to know that people outside the lab had found the Decision Lab Handbook useful!