The Douglas Research Centre, alongside the Environmental Adversity, Neurodevelopment, and Mental Health, and the Computational Brain Anatomy (CoBrA; led by Mallar Chakravarty) Lab are delighted to present the Inaugural Prenatal and Early Life Factors Impacting Behaviour and Mental Health Conference! The conference will be held January 26-28, 2022, and it aims to bring together the international community on prenatal and early life factors and how they can influence neurodevelopment and psychopathology across the lifespan.
Keynote speakers (listed below) will present on each day of the conference, and these will be complemented by research trainee talks.
Submissions from trainees at any stage will be welcomed, and registration encouraged! If you know a trainee with relevant work, please encourage them to submit an abstract through the registration link below.
For more information. – Register today!
What is the goal of this meeting?
Our major goal is to share findings in the community of neuroscientists and clinicians interested in how experiences prenatally and early in life may impact mental health later in life. Here, we seek to gather international researchers at multiple career and training stages to help share ideas, discuss challenges and triumphs, and foster burgeoning generations of scientists. We hope that by providing a platform to center the voices of both experienced researchers and trainees new to the field we can help create a melting pot of expertise and new perspectives contributing to the development of new collaborations and academic discussion.
Who are we trying to reach?
With our first conference, we seek to inspire participation through several avenues. If you are a trainee (undergraduate, graduate student, or post-doc) who studies the impact of the prenatal or early life environment on neurodevelopment, behaviour, or mental health, we would love to hear about your research in the form of a submitted abstract! Eighteen abstracts will be selected for talks over the course of the 3-day conference, with the best speaker each day awarded a 200 CAD prize. If you are a researcher in the field or otherwise interested member of the community, we encourage you to register for the conference for free to attend any and all sessions you desire! By eliminating attendance costs, we hope to foster a truly accessible environment where anyone can learn about the incredible work our keynote speakers and trainees are conducting.