The 9th IBRO World Congress on Neuroscience will take place for the first time in a Latin American country, Brazil. The event will be held from July 7 to 11, 2015 in Rio de Janeiro. With more than 150 speakers from 23 countries and over 1,600 participants already registered from all over the world, the IBRO World Congress brings the newest discussions about neuroscience and results from research conducted all over the globe on a vast set of different themes.

The event will cover most important areas and topics of current neuroscience research. The goal is to deepen understanding of brain structure and function, from molecules to behavior, in lectures by distinguished scientists, symposia and minisymposia with thematic leaders of different countries, and posters open to scientists, postdocs, and students all over the world.

The meeting will bring together big names in neuroscience, talking about hot themes. The British neurobiologist Colin Blakemore, from the University of London and Dana Foundation (UK), will present a lecture on neuroethics entitled “Mysteries, myths and miracles. The cost and benefits of neuroscience.” Blakemore is an expert in vision and the development of the brain.

Professor Terry Sejnowski, from Salk Institute, La Jolla (USA) will talk about how we can teach our brains to learn, in the lecture “Learning how to learn.” Sejnowski is a pioneer in computational neuroscience and his goal is to understand the principles that link brain to behavior. He has been using computational models and new analytical tools to understand how the brain represents the world and how new representations are formed through learning algorithms capable of changing the synaptic strength of connections between neurons.

Marian Joels, from the UMC Utrecht Brain Center (Netherlands), will focus on stress in the lecture “Stressed brain.” She studies how corticosteroid hormones change cellular function of limbic neurons and the effects of stress on functional connectivity and behavioral outcome in rodents and humans. In her work, she pays particular attention to the influence of stress during early life and the result of prolonged periods of stress in adulthood.

The Brazilian neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), will talk about brain and evolution in the symposium “Brain structure diversity in evolution: what changes, what doesn’t, and what does it matter?” Herculano-Houzel is known for having developed a new technique to estimate the absolute cellular composition of the brain. In addition, her research debunked previously held beliefs about neuroactivity and garnered several awards. Her findings led to six internationally published books. She is also known in Brazil for her activity as a science communicator, having presented a TV show about neuroscience in one of the biggest channels in the country, and having her own TED talk.

Other highlight subjects of the congress are Alzheimer’s disease, brain aging, traumatic brain injuries, visual perception and cognition, synapse formation, nanotools for neuroscience, emotions and memory, brain evolution, drug and food addiction, brain computer models, sex hormones and cognition, the effect of caffeine in the brain and optogenetics, the technique that uses light to control and study the brain.

To promote the congress and its program, the organizing committee has launched a channel in YouTube called NeuroChannel. Through interviews with recognized neuroscientists, NeuroChannel disseminates information about the brain and neuroscience research. Some of the videos illustrate the newest areas in neuroscience, while others are directly related to the congress program and its speakers. The films are all bilingual—Portuguese-English or Spanish-English—and 3-5 minutes long.