Yesterday, November 10, was my first full  day of the SFN convention.  To say the least, it was full of interesting interactions and information that I never thought that I would hear about or have.  I started the day off with breakfast at Starbucks, definitely more trouble than it was worth due to the lines.  I had heard that they were pretty bad in the mornings trying to get to the convention center, but I thought that was an over exaggeration. Boy was I wrong.  After coffee, I heard about how things can go awry “When Good Neurons Go Bad” from Anthony Grace.  A great talk about dopamine neurons and their role and regulation and how in psychiatric disorders, specifically in his talk depression and schizophrenia, this regulation is disrupted.  Later I met some new people, had some lunch, and spent a good deal of the afternoon checking out only a third, emphasis on only, of the vendor’s booths and became really interested in some that I’ll talk about in my later blogs, among them Backyard Brains, Kerafast Inc., Denator, Pipette.com, Bioss, and World Viz.  A little later I went to the clinical neuroscience social where I heard about the various paths that 5 great neuroscientists traveled to get to where they are and realized that there is a lot of ways to become and stay involved in neuroscience as a career besides research.  After that great day, I finished the night off hanging out and having dinner with friends.  All in all, just a great day. Really looking forward to everything else that neuroscience has to offer in these up coming days.