Our 2025 meeting will be hosted by the University of Edinburgh.  Edinburgh is the historical and cultural heart of Scotland, and we are delighted to have our meeting in the John McIntyre Conference Centre located at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh’s iconic extinct volcano. In addition to hearing of some fantastic science we look forward to an authentic Scottish ceilidh!

Please submit your talk and poster abstracts by 30 April 2025. (Submission form coming soon.)

Programme Highlights

• Keynote Address: To be announced

• Presentations by Early- and Mid-Career prize winners:
  Dr Christopher Madan (University of Nottingham) and Prof. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (University of Cambridge)

Symposia

• Submit proposals by 30 November 2024

• Symposia proposals can be emailed to the BACN secretary (ncooper@essex.ac.uk) and should consist of: (a) symposium title; (b) a list of the chair and 4 speakers and their provisional talk titles; (c) a 200 word abstract that outlines the topic and explains why it would be of interest (this will be used on our website); and (d) a brief equality and diversity statement.

Registration, Social Event, and Accommodation details coming soon!

We are pleased to offer two student bursaries to support attendance from UK Ethnic Minority Groups with details of how to apply here.

Our 2024 meeting was hosted by City St. George’s, University of London in the heart of London—next to lively Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell, and Angel and close to major transport hubs (Farringdon, Kings X, Liverpool St).  The meeting is organised in partnership with the new Centre for Clinical, Social & Cognitive Neuroscience.

Programme Highlights

• Keynote Address: Prof. Sophie Scott; ICN/UCL (https://speechcommunicationlab.weebly.com)
  The science of laughter - from evolution to neuroscience

• Presentations by Early- and Mid-Career prize winners:
  Dr Patricia Lockwood (Birmingham University) and Prof. Tobias Egner (Duke University)

• Symposia

  • Investigating Neural Plasticity in the Healthy and Pathological brain with Advanced Non-invasive Brain Stimulation. A Sel

  • The Face in Emotion: An Embodied Perspective from EMG, EEG and Facial Stimulation. S Korb

  • The Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Trust and Trustworthiness: From perception to Social Interaction. AK Fett, L Garrido

  • How Past and Present Interact with Working Memory. J Kaiser, C Haenschel

  • Understanding Spatial Cognition in the Hippocampal Network through Behaviour, Intracranial Electrophysiology, Brain Imaging, Pathology, and Deep Neural Network models. R Mok

  • New challenges and frontiers in the cognitive neuroscience of body perception. L Crucianelli

Full Program (or Full Program without Abstracts)

BACN Annual scientific meeting 2023

Our 2023 annual meeting was hosted by the Cardiff University in a fantastic, central venue.  The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) is located in Bute Park near the river Taff, a short walk from Cardiff Castle and the train station. 

Programme Highlights

• 2023 Mid-career Prize Lecture by Jie Su (University of Aberdeen): "Self as Processes"

• 2023 Early-career Prize Lecture by Freek van Ede (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): “Anticipating behaviour through working memory”

• 2022 Early-career Prize Lecture by Jennifer Cook (University of Birmingham): “Social and non-social learning: Common, or specialised, mechanisms?”

• Symposium on “Constructing Reality: Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Non-veridical Perception”

• Symposium on “Affect-driven learning and information seeking”

• Symposium on “From Cognitive Neuroscience to Empirical Aesthetics and Back Again

Click here for the final version of the program!

We held a 2-day in-person conference at the new Edgbastion Park hotel located on the beautiful University of Birmingham campus. On 24th May, The Distillery hosted the evening event. Dinner was followed by a performance from the world-famous University of Birmingham Psychology staff/student band.

Highlights

• 2021 Mid-career Prize Lecture by Sarah Garfinkel ‘Clinical neuroscience and the heart-brain axis

• 2021 Early-career Prize Lecture by Matthew Apps ‘Can I be bothered? Neural and computational mechanisms underlying the dynamics of effort processing

• 2022 Mid-career Prize Lecture by Beth Jefferies ‘The neural basis of flexible semantic cognition’

• Symposium on ‘The role of theta oscillations as a binding mechanism in cognitive processes’

• Symposium on ‘Social and cognitive development across the lifespan’

• Symposium on ‘What do human hippocampal neurons code?’

See the programme!

Despite the trying circumstances of 2021 we managed to gather. BACN joined the BNA for a virtual meeting taking place on the 12-15 April giving our delegates the opportunity to experience a wide-ranging selection of symposia and talks and join a large scientific community for discourse. The president’s invited lecture was delivered by Prof. Philippe Schyns from the University of Glasgow. The Mid-Career Prize lecture was given by Prof. Heidi Johansen-Berg from the University of Oxford, followed by the Early-Career Prize lecture given by Dr. Beatriz Calvo-Merino (City University, London). We thank all our speakers and delegates for coming together to make a memorable 2021 meeting!

Our 2019 meeting took place on the 2nd and 3rd of September in the historical city of Cambridge. The meeting featured a keynote address delivered by Kia Nobre (University of Oxford) and prize lectures by Patrick Haggard (University College London) and Micah Allen (Aarhus University). In addition to six free platform talks, the conference included three symposia. Edward de Haan chaired a series of talks on Split brain: split or unified agency, John Duncan & Alexandra Woolgar headed a symposia on the information content of brain activity in real time and Katherine Dyke chaired a symposia entitled Brain stimulation as therapy - who responds? This conference also saw the first introduction of speed presentations in which a number of poster presenters were given a 3 minute slot to present their work. Due to the large number of excellent submissions we also held a satellite event on the 4th of September on Language and Cognition.

The evening’s entertainment was provided by the Firecrest Ceilidh band at Browns Bar and Brasserie. We were thoroughly impressed with the high standard of academic work showcased at this conference and hope to see many of you again next year in Brighton!

The two-day meeting was hosted by Gregor Thut and Marios Philiastides at the University of Glasgow. It featured a keynote address by Charlotte Stag (University of Oxford) and two career prize winner talks delivered by Chris Miall (University of Birmingham; Mid-Career) and Joseph Galea (University of Birmingham; Early-Career).

In addition to high quality open platform talks and posters we accepted three symposia. Gregor Thut and Marios Philiastides chaired a symposium on the decoding and driving of brain activity. Olaf Hauk headed a symposium on neuroscientific investigations of language processing and Stephanie Rossit chaired a symposium on human neuroimaging of predictive processing.

Because we also like to have a good time at BACN conferences our hosts organised a delicious dinner at the Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor which was followed by our traditional ceilidh dance.

On the 7th and 8th of September, the 2017 meeting was hosted by Patric Bach and Jeremy Goslin at Plymouth University. The keynote was delivered by Steven Tipper (University of York) alongside prize winner talks given by Duncan Astle (CBU, Cambridge; early-career winner) and Matt Lambon Ralph (University of Manchester; mid-career winner).

Alongside stimulating open platform talks, the conference featured three symposia on the ‘Cognitive neuroscience of object affordance and it’s clinical implications’ chaired by Patric Bach, the ‘Neurofeedback for the 21st Century’ chaired by Katia Rubia and ‘New analysis methods of EEG in cognitive neuroscience’ delivered by Jeremy Goslin, Laura Astolfi, Marios Philiastinides and Bruno Rossion.