'Ageing' and 'mental health' announced as annual themes

16th Jul 2019

We're delighted to announce that "Ageing" and "Mental Health" have been selected by the British Neuroscience Association's (BNA) members, Council and Committee to be the annual themes for 2021 and 2023 respectively.  

The BNA recently introduced the concept of annual themes as a way to guide its activities and programme of work in years ahead.  This year (2019) is the theme of neuromyths, and 2020 will focus on pain. 

In order to select forthcoming themes, both members and non-members were asked to indicate what topics they would like to see highlighted.

Candidate themes were then discussed by the BNA's Council and Committee members, with the final selection being those with highest interest, addressing societal needs, having a broad range of sub-topics within them, and which will create an vaired and relevant programme over the next few years.

As an example of how an annual theme guides the BNA's activities, this year's theme of 'Neuromyths' was featured at the BNA's Christmas Symposium, used as the basis of a social media campaign during Brain Awareness Week, and is continuing via the Credibility in Neuroscience programme. 

2020's annual theme will be launched at the 2019 Christmas Symposium, 'Pain, pleasure and the agony of Christmas', with further activities around the neuroscience of pain in the pipeline; watch this space for updates. 

If you have any thoughts or ideas for activities to highlight our annual themes, please do get in touch.

Please note: this article originally stated that Mental Health would be the theme for 2022.  This was subsequently changed to 2023, in order to align with the BNA Festivals of Neuroscience, with the Artificial Intelligence becoming 2022's annual theme.