ICN 2022: Meeting up again and celebrating neuroendocrinology with the international community

Abstract

The 10th International Congress of Neuroendocrinology (ICN) took place from the 7 to 10th August 2022 at the Scottish Events Campus in Glasgow, Scotland. The meeting, sponsored by the International Neuroendocrine Federation (INF), incorporated the Annual Meetings of the British Society for Neuroendocrinology (BSN), the French Society of NeuroEndocrinology (SNE), Hypothalamic Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology Australasia (HNNA), and the Pan-American Neuroendocrine Society (PANS). Since the previous ICN in Toronto in 2018, many aspects of our everyday (scientific) lives had changed, and the COVID pandemic had resulted in the cancelation or postponement of many planned scientific meetings, or their move to online only. As a result of the different phases of the global pandemic and variant circulation, for many delegates in Glasgow this was their first face-to-face international meeting in over two years. Others had made the most of travel opening up again by also taking the opportunity to attend either or both of the RegPep24 or Kisspeptin 2022 satellite meetings, or the International Symposium of Avian Endocrinology, held just before ICN. It is noteworthy that all three of these accompanying meetings were supported financially by Journal of Neuroendocrinology, as was the 7th International Meeting on the Neuroscience of Parenting, held earlier in the summer, output from which was published in the July 2023 issue of the Journal. For ICN itself, the Programme Organising Committee, chaired by Suzanne Dickson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and with representatives of all the constituent society members of the INF, assembled a full schedule of plenary talks and symposia. These invited talks were spread over the four days of the meeting and comprised a careful balance of speaker profiles, experience and geography, which has been a strong feature of previous ICN meetings. Although the meeting was planned as face-to-face by the local organisers, headed excellently by Neil Evans and Michelle Bellingham of the University of Glasgow, one eye had to be kept trained on the evolving global pandemic, which was an everpresent during much of the detailed planning process. Come the summer of 2022, travel was still difficult in some parts of the world, and these continuing issues prevented some invited speakers from attending the meeting, with some electing to deliver their talks remotely, while others were forced to withdraw and had to be replaced at short notice. Special thanks go to those international colleagues who stepped in, often at the last moment, to allow a full programme to proceed. Despite the problems experienced in the aftermath of COVID, the programme contained nine plenary speakers and 16 symposia, covering the themes of reproduction, behaviour, metabolism, stress, fluid/sodium balance, timing/circadian, neurohypophysis and development. I am delighted that most of these themes are represented in this Special Issue of papers from the meeting, written by the invited speakers and their collaborators and colleagues. Energy balance and appetite research is well represented in the Special Issue with reviews of (i) hypothalamic carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 isoforms by Rodríguez-Rodríguez and colleagues; (ii) the convergence of microbiota, oxytocin and stress on eating behaviour by Cuesta-Marti et al.; (iii) the role of the orexin/hypocretin system in decision-making after ingestion – to eat more and rest, or to terminate eating and search for better food? – by Peleg-Raibstein, Viskaitis and Burdakov; (iv) the adverse effects of gestational ω-3 and ω-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid imbalance on the programming of fetal brain development in the context of children born to overweight or obese women by Cinquina and colleagues; and (v) the regulation of ingestion of both food and salt – appetite and sodium appetite – by the central serotonin system by Shin, Kim and Sohn. From the Stress sessions, Jeanneteau discusses the remodelling of functional connectivity in stress and Alzheimer's disease, while Antonoudiou and colleagues examine the influence of chronic stress on network states governing valence processing, the process of assigning value to sensory inputs and experiences, and their potential relevance to the risk of psychiatric illness. Elsewhere, Silver and colleagues review the parallels between the recent description of portal pathways joining the capillary beds of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and a circumventricular organ, the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis (OVLT), and the well-established pituitary portal pathways. Staying with the SCN, Thirouin and colleagues contribute an original research paper based on new data presented at ICN 2022 examining sex-specific differences in the circadian pattern of action potential firing by rat SCN vasopressin neurons. The development of social behaviour such as the ability of animals to interact with others and form groups is coupled with neuroendocrine mechanisms, but the causal link between the two remains underexplored. In this Special Issue, Kareklas and colleagues review the zebrafish (Danio rerio) as an emerging model in social neuroendocrinology, discussing involvement of generalized motivation and cognitive components, neuroplasticity and functional connectivity across social decision-making brain areas and how these are modulated chiefly by the oxytocin-vasopressin neuroendocrine system. There was a strong reproduction-related theme at ICN 2022 represented here by reviews of (i) the role of oxytocin–gastrinReceived: 23 August 2023 Accepted: 23 August 2023