Over 190 delegates attended the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, Scotland to hear a variety of speakers discuss their research progress over the last year, spanning areas of basic science to clinical research. It was fantastic to hear of the recent discoveries and advances in autism research at SIDB and The Patrick Wild Centre and engage in lively and open discussions. As well as catching up with familiar faces, we also had members of the Autism Rat Consortium (ARC), who were in Edinburgh for the ARC meeting the day before.

Below are a full list of our speakers with talk titles. Those who were unable to make it in person were able to listen in on the talks via the online live stream.

Day 1

Giles Hardingham – Probing microglial function in early life

Raven Hickson – The Habitat: Complex Housing, Complex Data

Vanesa Salazar-Sanchez – Social behaviour in two rat models of SYNGAP1 haploinsufficiency

Katie Paton – The role of ASD associated genes in neurodevelopment versus neuronal maintenance

Matthew Lyst – SET3 complex dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders

Jingjing Ye – The cerebellum and fear-based emotional processing

Danai Katsanevaki – Brain-state dependent deficit in visual discrimination in a mouse model of SYNGAP1-related Intellectual Disability

Leena Williams – Unravelling somatosensory processing and tactile sensitivities in Fragile X Syndrome

Matt Nolan – Neural coding schemes for representing learned spatial behaviours

Loren Frank (keynote speaker) – Doing and Thinking

Day 2

Seth Grant – Age, Environment, Sensory Input, Sex, and Sleep Deprivation Shape the Synaptome Architecture of the Brain

Tim Czopka – Glial regulation of circuit assembly, function and dysfunction in zebrafish

Emma Wilson – Novel methods for research curation and evidence synthesis

Ian Simpson – Multi-Omic Graph Diagnosis (MOGDx): a data integration tool to perform classification tasks for heterogeneous diseases

Sam Booker – Using living human brain tissue to understand epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disorders

Paul Donlin-Asp – Bridging the SynGAP: dissecting the functional role of local SynGAP1 synthesis at the synapse

Rebecca Jordan – Investigating the mechanisms of predictive plasticity in the primary visual cortex

Emily Osterweil (Virtual) – Troubled translation in Fragile X and autism

Everyone had the opportunity to share their research via the poster sessions during the lunches and wine reception, which provided a great opportunity for students and leading academics to connect, sparking discussions and promoting collaborations.

There were post-conference drinks and a gala dinner at The Free Company, Balerno for SIDB and Patrick Wild Centre members to reflect and celebrate our successes and continue conversations with colleagues and friends.