Our Trip to ICSD 2023
International Conference on Spreading Depolarizations
Szeged, Hungary || October 2-5, 2023
Last year at the ICSD meeting when they announced the next meeting would be in Szeged, Hungary, many of us said “Where?” For those who attended the meeting, we are now saying “Wow”. We spent four days in a wonderful town about two hours south of Budapest seeing familiar faces and learning about what’s new in spreading depolarizations. Eszter Farkas did an amazing job organizing the event. There were 83 registrants, with a half dozen viewing remotely. They were from the U.S, U.K., Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Austria, and Hungary.
And, thanks to Tobias Hamann (NeuroVisio), we had real Brain Tsunami Beer this year shipped in from Germany. Last year in Salt Lake City, we were only allowed to bring the labels due to their regulations.
There were some groundbreaking presentations at ICSD 2023. Dr. Sharon Jewell presented a novel method that she’s been working on with Dr. Anthony Strong to detect changes in spreading depolarization waveform morphology. Using a neurostimulation technique, her group is measuring the tissue response of a spreading depolarization and then quantifying segments of the waveform to derive features that extend far beyond whether it simply occurred or not. Our group likes to think that her technique is similar to using a shadow to measure the size of the object, instead of measuring the object itself.
The meeting was at a resort that had a waterpark attached to it with, what I heard, was the largest water slide in Europe. And yes, we went down it. It looks tame from the outside, but when you are screaming down it looping around and then free-falling in the “kamikaze sections” as they call them, it gets your heart rate up.
There was a lot of networking time at ICSD 2023, and the hotel was just across the river from the city and the university. So many of us took the nightly walk across the bridge to seek food and drink around the town. When trying to find a bar one night, Google Maps said we were at our destination when we were on the bridge. We were confused until we realized that the bar was under the bridge. It turned out to be our favorite bar.
The town had some interesting architecture and was where Albert Szent-Gyoirgyi did the work that got him his Nobel Prize. During our meeting, they announced the 2023 Nobel winners in Physiology and Medicine that included Katalin Kariko for her discoveries related to mRNA that led to the COVID vaccines. Her work was done, in part, at the University of Szeged. So this small, somewhat unknown, university town now had two Nobel Prize winners. That was very cool and we all celebrated along with Eszter.
The reception was in an old building that reminded me of Philly – graffiti on the walls, seemed to be in disrepair – but an amazingly cool place. It looked like the ruin bars in Budapest. It was fun to see Tony Strong dancing away. My mentor in many ways!
We were saddened to hear that Jed Hartings, one of the founders of the meeting, was stopped from flying over because his passport expired in just under 3 months (Whaaaat?). I learned from that. He was greatly missed, but we sent him a care package.
Next year’s meeting will be in Turkey, November 13-17. More on that in a later issue.
