During the last 3 weeks, I had the chance to travel to 3 amazing cities: Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
The main objective was to attend the “1st International Brain Stimulation Conference” in Singapore and then the “2015 International Workshop on Clinical Brain Neural-Machine Interface Systems”. As there were some days between both conferences, I stopped in Hong Kong to meet-up with very interesting partners and organize a workshop. Overall, this trip offered me a great opportunity to get to know with my own eyes all the nice research, clinical applications and strong neuroscience teams working in these asian countries.
Brain Stimulation Conference, Singapore
With over 550 participants, including the leading scientists in the Brain Stimulation research area, no wonder this conference was really interesting. Among the plenary speakers there was Josep Valls-Solé, one of the first Starstim users. Among the session speakers, there was also Michael Nitsche, member of Neuroelectrics Scientific Advisory board.
Beside setting up a Neuroelectrics booth together with my colleague Uri Fligil, I had also the chance to present a poster about the first brain-to-brain communication experiment. It was very funny the meet Michel Berg in the conference. He is the one who decoded the brain-to-brain message. I was the one who sent it. First time ever we were together, after communicating through e-mail and through … brain-to-brain.
Starstim Workshop, Hong Kong
In Hong Kong I met the wonderful team of Healthlink Holdings, our partner in Hong Kong and Macao.
It has been one of the most prolific trips I have ever made. We visited 5 different hospitals that are very advanced and active in rehabilitation therapies. We also organized a 2 hours workshop with more than 60 attendees. Quite a lot of interest indeed.
Next time I go to Hong Kong, I will save some time to visit the beautiful city and its surroundings!
Clinical Brain Machine Interfaces, Tokyo
Although the this conference was a little bit smaller, the quality of the talks was impressive. One of the keynote presenter was Niels Birbaumer, also member of the scientific advisory board of Neuroelectrics.
Besides also setting up a booth in the conference, I had the change to make a lot of visits to very interesting research centers and hospitals, together with Nihon Binary, our Japanese partner.
Among others I met-up with Riken Brain Science Institute (BSI) in Tokyo, the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), a division of NICT in Osaka, the Human Brain Research Center from the Kyoto University, the department of Neurology from the Osaka University and much more…
As a last word, I would like to mention that I am very happy to see so much neuroscience going on in Asia. It has been very interesting to have met with so many good researchers and clinicians very active in the EEG, BCI, Neurofeedback and Neurostimulation field. I am sure this is only the starting point and that every day more and more people will get into this research and clinical field both in Asia and abroad. From my side, I am already looking forward to visit Asia again very soon.
See you next time!
