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.