Drawing the Brain. Listening to the Brain. UNAM’s Scientific Encounters in Spain

Studying the brain is a passion and we often refer to it as the universe inside the head. Why is it so exciting? According to neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, this “mass of matter that we have in our heads and that is composed of almost one hundred billion neurons connected in an indecipherable tangle” sustains “all the mental and cognitive activities of human beings, including our thoughts, our personality, our consciousness, our perceptions, memories, emotions, behavior. Everything we have been, what we are, and what we will be, comes from the brain.” Hence how exciting and important it is to study and know this extraordinary organ.

In 2023, as part of the activities to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of its establishment, UNAM’s Center for Mexican Studies in Spain (UNAM-Spain) organized a series of dialogues around the brain with the idea of promoting the interaction of colleagues from both sides of the Atlantic and promoting public conversations between renowned specialists who, in an informative tone, bring their research closer to society. These meetings were held in collaboration with the Telefónica Foundation, whose cultural space in the city of Madrid presented during those days Brain(s), a wonderful exhibition that showed the general public “the way in which art, science, and philosophy have represented this fascinating organ, the one that generates the most questions both scientifically and philosophically, throughout history.” 

In this context and in close collaboration between UNAM-Spain, UNAM’s Coordination of Scientific Research, and the Institute of Neurobiology (INb), several activities were carried out. Among them, a session at the Casa de México Foundation in Spain, as part of the Transatlantic Conversations series, in which doctor Laura López Mascaraque, researcher at the Cajal Institute of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and doctor Jorge Larriva, researcher at the INb, talked about  “Smell: the most emotional and forgotten of the senses.” 

The initiative also included two round tables held at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica: “Drawing the brain” and “Listening to the brain,” in which neuroscientists from Mexico and Spain talked to explore together “the streets and avenues that form the brain routes.” These meetings aimed to make visible and expand the dialogue between colleagues from both countries in the field of science and to share with the public how aspects related to Neurobiology are part of our daily lives. 

In the dialogue “Drawing the brain,” neuroscientists Sarael Alcauter, Jorge Larriva, and Teresa Morales (INb), together with Fernando de Castro (Instituto Cajal), spoke about the ideas, methods, and techniques that have made it possible to discover how brain pathways are formed and how these theoretical approaches, and the techniques that have allowed their development, have evolved over time. Doctor Morales addressed the perspective of neurosciences in Mexico and its interactions with Spain. 

During the dialogue “Listening to the brain,” UNAM researchers Sarael Alcauter, Teresa Morales, and Pavel Rueda developed, along with doctor Liset Menéndez de la Prida (CSIC), how different approaches and experimental methods have allowed “listening” to the brain. A central part was to delve into “how to respond to a scientific question when we access information from different brain areas that are active in learning or during a cognitive task that involves brain processing.” 

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