NEUROMI 2019 – International Meeting Highlights – Milano, 20-22 November 2019

The Milan Center for Neuroscience (www.neuromi.it) was founded in 2014 by the University of Milano-Bicocca to promote high-level multidisciplinary research and education in the field of Neuroscience, fostering collaborations among clinical, molecular, cognitive, imaging, computational and biotechnological fields. It now gathers more than 300 neuroscientists from 8 Departments of Milano-Bicocca, other Universities and Scientific Institutions from the Milan area.

This is the fifth NeuroMI international meeting. Previous ones have been “Imaging of the brain” (2015), “Prediction and prevention of dementia: new hope” (2016), “Personalised medicine in multiple sclerosis” (2017), “Brain stimulation and brain plasticity: from basic research to clinical practice” (2018).

 

“Food for brain: promoting health and preventing diseases” is the topic of this fifth international meeting, organized in collaboration with Best4Food, a multidisciplinary Center of the University of Milano-Bicocca dedicated to food research. Within Best4Food more than 100 scientists investigate the food chain – including transformation, distribution, consumption and labeling – to enhance food nutritional properties and to identify the most suitable strategies to improve environmental sustainability and human life quality. Diets inextricably link human health and environmental sustainability.

 

The scientific targets for healthy diets and sustainable food systems are integrated into a common framework, which should be universal for all food cultures and production systems in the world, with a high potential for local adaptation and scalability.

 

Food is also one of the main human motivator, and its hedonic quality has the power to drive many of our everyday activities.

 

The brain, which represents 2% of our body weight, consumes about 20% of the calories we eat each day and the quality of the food affects brain development and functions and the onset of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Nutraceuticals are also emerging strategies to prevent and treat brain disorders.

 

All these topics will be explored and top level international scientists will cover the most recent data in each field. Young scientists are also invited to submit their contributions, which will be selected for oral communications in the main sessions and for poster presentations.

 

Food for mankind: health and sustainability – Cognitive and clinical neuroscience of food oriented behaviour and obesity – Food, nutraceuticals and prevention of neuropsychiatric diseases will be the major topics treated in these three days, hopefully stimulating and with large participation of a multidisciplinary attendance from physicians, biologists, psychologists and food experts.

 

Key-words: Nutrition, Diet, Microbiota, Nutraceuticals, Food oriented behavior, Obesity, Cognitive decline, Cognitive enhancers, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Inflammaging, Multiple Sclerosis, Neuroinflammation, Anorexia nervosa, Eating disorders, Epigenetics.