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April 04, 2024 BANGALORE NEUROSCIENCE MEETING
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Neuroscience Research Symposium, NCBS, Mannotsava-2024
October 25, 2024
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Inauguration of RNP CBM
The Centre for Brain and Mind launched Baatein on August 29, 2025. Baatein is CBM's flagship series envisioned as a space for open conversations, discussions and a continuing effort towards easing the acceptance of mental well-being. The first event under Baatein was the theatre showcase titled The Trial of Abdus Salam, performed by Nilanjan P Choundhury and team. This English play depicts a slice of the life of Abdus Salam, a theoretical physicist from Pakistan. The play was an enthralling, captivating and deeply thought provoking visual demonstration on the final days of the scientist. It brought to the fore how mental health gets affected by one's successes, life's highs/lows and personal beliefs.
The second event under Baatein was screening Beautiful Boy, a 2018 movie directed by Felix Van Groeningen. The movie narrates the challenges emerging in a father-son relationship and the family's challenges and complexities of tackling the son's repeated falling to substance addiction. The movie was well-received. Subsequently, a creative workshop was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kanika Sinha, Director, Centre for Writing & Communication, Ashoka University, based on this movie. Participants were encouraged to express and reflect their views in the Indian context of the movie with American family setup. The workshop concluded with a deep discussion on the state of substance addiction, treatment, societal pressures faced by victim families. The participants reflected their thoughts in words, via art and other media of expressions.
CBM participated in the NCBS Open day - 2025. The stall succinctly demonstrated CBM's ongoing research and were given an overview of the various initiatives taken for studying brain disorders. Volunteers at the stall had displayed stem cells and organoids under microscope. The star attraction of the stall remained the Make your own Brain Hat. The visitors were handed over brain hat-making kits and with the help of CBM volunteers, they were able to make colourful brian hats out of paper. The CBM stall saw a steady number of visitors and through the day, the stall would have attracted over 1,000 visitors across age groups.
In observance of the World Mental Health Day (October 10), the Centre for Brain and Mind (CBM) organised a series of mental health awareness sessions in Kannada— in a first-ever initiative at NCBS dedicated entirely to the institute's support and administrative staff. Organised as part of Baatein – CBM's flagship banner promoting conversations around mental well-being – the sessions were held in partnership with Parivathan: Counselling, Training and Research Centre, Bangalore. Over 300 staffers benefitted from these sessions.
The second edition of Manotsava, the national mental health festival, was held during November 8 - 9, 2025, in Bangalore. The event was co-organised by RNP, NCBS and NIMHANS. The Centre for Brain and Mind had put up a stall at Manotsava which presented both the clinical and the laboratory-sides : from disease diagnosis, management and clinical research happening across NIMHANS and NCBS. The visitors were also engaged with interactive games and brain hat-making activity. The selfie point and the fun take-aways were popular at this stall among visitors of all age groups.
The second NRS was held on November 10 & 11, 2025. The theme for this year's symposium was 'Emerging biology of neuropsychiatric disorders'. In all, there were 122 participants including 11 invited speakers. The 19 talks organised across the two days were enriching to the academic community. A total of 50 posters were presented during the poster presentation session.
November 15 - 19 saw the largest gathering of neuroscientists from around the world in San Diego, California for the annual Neuroscience meeting organized by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). Around 20,000 researchers in various stages of their academic careers and industry professionals with an interest in neuroscience research attended the conference.
The Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind was represented at the conference by Dr. Shriya Palchaudhuri and Prof. Biju Viswanath, who presented posters and exhibited a stall at the graduate school fair. The posters and the stall showcased the biorepository of cell lines derived from patients of severe mental illnesses (SMI), as well as the digital database CALM-Brain, that incorporates clinical and neuroimaging data from patients. These rich datasets included in the cellular and digital repositories are accessible to researchers collaborating with CBM, in order to investigate the multi-scale biological changes that occur with the progression of SMIs.
The duo also presented some specific findings from this large-scale cohort study emphasizing the need for the addition of an Indian SMI population to global efforts. The CBM booth was well-visited by neuroscientists keen on furthering the understanding of psychiatric disorders.
Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind interacted with high school teachers of Karnataka associated with Agastya International Foundation. In this effort led by the Science Education and Outreach Office of NCBS, RN-CBM members Dr.Geetha Swamilingiah and Dr. Shriya Palchaudhuri were the facilitators for neurobiology. The basic functions of the human brain with respect to its parts, the brain when in health and when in diseased condition were among discussed in detail during the three-hour session held at NCBS.
Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind engaged with about 250 students of Christ University, Bangalore. Through two sessions, Team CBM spoke on neuroscience, the need to study mental illness, discussed some of the CBM's ongoing research. RN-CBM joined hands with the Christ University during the latter's student orientation for the incoming batch of 2026.
Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind was part of the 2026 Pint of Science, Bengaluru. Pint of Science is an internationally held annual science popularisation event held in May. RN-CBM was represented by Dr. Shriya Palchaudhuri, Associate Director for External Engagements, and Dr. Ron Philip, CBM Senior Research Fellow. He delved on the growing need for precision medicine in treatment regimes.
Dr. Palchaudhuri informed the audience about the origins and history of neuroscience, the progress of the field and opportunities for young researchers. Anjali Marar, Science Communicator and Nisha Raghavan, RN-CBM Program Manager, jointly conducted the Brain Quiz for the audience.
CBM engaged with about 40 undergraduate students of psychology, history and literature from Christ University, Bengaluru. Two hour-long sessions with the students focused on the need for studying the brain and its disorders, the challenges in brain research and the ongoing work at CBM. They were also shown CBM-generated stem cells, brain and heart cells.
Venue: NCBS
The discussion focused on the existing challenges faced by the student community at the higher education institutes. The community was represented by two students, one each from NCBS and IISc. The discussion brought to the fore the ways and suggestions to tackle some of these challenges and the short and long-term steps needed to be taken to make the academic experience enriching.
Speaker: Prof. Vikram Patel, The Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of Global Health, Harvard Medical School
Host: Prof. Prabha Chandra (NIMHANS)
The public talk painted the landscape for the future of global mental health care, highlighting systemic gaps and proposing community-based solutions. In conversation with Prof. Prabha Chandra, Prof. Vikram Patel offered his opinions on charting India's roadmap towards a sustainable mental healthcare, that relies on smaller groups of healthcare delivery, thus relieving bigger institutions from the ever-growing burden of mental health incidences.
