Brandon O’Hanlon, Psychology, Lancaster University (2020 Cohort)

I recently had the amazing opportunity of going to and presenting at multiple conferences before the start of the new academic term – it’s been a great Summer of Science with our lab, the NoSA group! The first stop was my first international conference and my first trip to Scandinavia: The International Symposium of Auditory and Audiological Research (ISAAR) conference in Nyborg, Denmark. This was a wonderful (and very intense!) conference for hearing science, involving work about hearing aids and hearing loss, new techniques for improving hearing quality in older adults, and plenty of biological and neuroscientific accounts of how we might improve our perception of speech in difficult listening conditions. As my PhD is looking at using different senses, like sight and touch, to improve speech perception in noisy environments, the conference was the perfect fit for me! I took a lot from the work shared that has been beneficial for my own research outlooks, and I have been inspired more so to get stuck in with further research projects already! The venue itself was also great: by the beach on one of Denmark’s many islands, with incredible food. I’ll definitely look to go again in the future.

The other two conference trips were national. Next up was the British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience conference in Cardiff. A delightful experience to gain more insight not only into my more specific niche of speech perception, but of wider areas in cognitive neuroscience as a whole! What was particularly helpful was having the chance to talk with manufacturers of specific neuroscientific equipment, such as Electroencephalography (EEG). Quite the mouthful! This piece of kit is one I use currently in the lab to investigate how the brain adapts its activity to better understand speech that we hear. To be able to talk to the company who makes the kit directly was useful for understanding even more about the smaller intricacies of our methods. It was also super cool to get a sneak peek at upcoming improvements and new equipment in research to come as well! As for Cardiff, it is a brilliant city that I adore travelling to at any chance I can. If you do find yourself in South Wales, please do give it a visit!

And finally, right after our Cardiff trip, we had another conference in London: the Brainbox Initiative conference. This was yet again another showcase of amazing and very high-quality work from around the world, this time with the focus on brain stimulation techniques as a means of altering brain activity to better behaviour. It was particularly fascinating to see how stimulation techniques could be used to enhance hearing quality for those with hearing loss. Whilst in London, we also had the rare chance to watch an academic-led stand-up comedy show all about science. One of our lab colleagues even took part (they were great)!

All three conferences were excellent opportunities to share my preliminary data and current research studies to a wider academic audience. I thoroughly enjoyed presenting my poster as well as in a data blitz talk. From feedback to more creative ideas to explore past my current experiments, I took a lot home from these trips and hope I managed to give a lot back in return. I cannot wait for my next conference!