It has been hypothesized that cell assemblies represent mental or perceptual entities, forming the basis of neural coding and computation. We investigated how the number of cell assemblies was related to the age of the rats and spontaneous remapping, using unit recordings of CA1 pyramidal cells in six young and six old rats while they learned a place-dependent eyeblink conditioning task (Schimanski et al., 2013). To control the dependence of cell assembly detection on different number of recorded neurons, we selected 30 pyramidal cells randomly from each recording session and repeated the procedure 25 times. This generated >8000 data sets. The number of cell assemblies was estimated by a recently proposed method (Russo and Durstewitz, 2017). We found that young rats had significantly more cell assemblies than old ones (median for young = 166.7, median for old = 87.4, Mann-Whitney test, p = 3.1 x 10-8). Significantly more cell assemblies were also detected in non-remapping rats than remapping ones (median for non-remapping = 192.1, median for remapping = 90.9, Mann-Whitney test, p = 8.4 x 10-13). Interestingly, cell assemblies were most abundant in the first few days of recording if rats were grouped into non-remapping, young or old, but not in remapping. Taken together, we showed that significantly more cell assemblies were detected in young and non-remapping rats. Reduction of cell assemblies over training in non-remapping rats suggests that efficient neural codes may be generated by learning and hence a reduced number of cell assemblies is sufficient.

Hippocampal CA1 network supports more cell assemblies in young and non-remapping rats

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PS-2-F -  Cognition and Behavior

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Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

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Hippocampal CA1 network supports more cell assemblies in young and non-remapping rats

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