#INS2019inNYC (Entry 3)

I have two favorite parts of any INS conference: The agora of poster sessions and The Birch Lecture (named for Herbert Birch). The Benton and - now - the Satz Awards are nostalgic reminders. Finally, Plenary C looks interesting: "Generation of New Hippocampal Neurons in the Adult Brain: Implications for Mental Health", as does Invited Symposium 3: "Global Neuroscience: Impact of Culture, Resources, and Education".

I have always tracked the The Birch Lecture. Herbert G. Birch was, from all accounts, a wonderful person and an extraordinary teacher. When I was an undergraduate student, I received mentoring in developmental biopsychology from several of his colleagues and students (Susan Fleischer, Tina Moreau, and Gerald Turkewitz). I worked as a student with rat models of perinatal malnutrition, which was a methodological offshoot of his long interest in malnutrition and poverty. My MA thesis was based on his groundbreaking work exploring neonatal lateralization. He died a number of years before any of this, but I always felt a connection to his work. (Others may know him better from his work with Chess and Thomas on temperament and The New York Longitudinal Study). Allan Mirsky, a student of his, spoke fondly of Herbert Birch in his 2001 NIH Oral History interview, actually presented a Birch Lecture at an earlier INS (Pittsburgh, if memory serves), and wrote the homage abstracted below [click on image to enlarge it]