Dra. Laura Modol co-organised the Barrels Meeting 2026, which was held on 4–5 July 2026 (9:00–20:00 CET) at the Sala Josep Marull auditorium, Dr. Aiguader Building, Campus Universitari Mar, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
The Barrels Meeting convenes researchers focused on sensory-motor neuroscience, particularly but not exclusively in rodents, covering areas such as somatosensory, visual, auditory and motor systems, as well as decision-making. Attendees’ approaches span behaviour, electrophysiology, cellular imaging, optogenetics, anatomy, molecular biology and computational modelling. The meeting welcomes faculty, postdoctoral researchers, students and all other researchers working on any aspect of sensory-motor circuitry, not only the rodent whisker-barrel system from which the meeting originally grew.
Having served as the Society for Neuroscience’s longest running satellite event for 37 years, the Barrels Meeting is entering a new chapter: beginning with FENS 2026, it will alternate between FENS and SfN to broaden accessibility for researchers across different geographic areas.
The programme spaned for two days of invited long talks and attendee-submitted short talks selected from abstracts, with poster presentations also encouraged.
Confirmed Speakers
- Jerry Chen — Boston University
- Mathew Diamond — SISSA
- Valerie Ego-Stengel — CNRS / Paris Saclay University
- Sami El-Boustani — University of Geneva
- Laura Grima — HHMI Janelia
- Alexander Groh — Heidelberg University
- Miguel Maravall — University of Sussex
- Laura Modol — Hospital del Mar Research Institute
- Simon Musall — Forschungszentrum Jülich
- Marcel Oberlaender — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
- Carl Petersen — École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- Fan Wang — Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The full programme will be published after 1st May 2026.
