Ever since its inception, neuroscience has been an integrative discipline, embracing different approaches and fields, and bringing in curious minds from outside the traditional boundaries of the field. After all, Pavlov was mostly interested in digestive glands, but nevertheless ended up being most famous for his contributions to neuroscience. Now more than ever, there is a lot of fascinating science happening at the interface of neuroscience with other biological disciplines. The interaction of the nervous system with metabolism and organ physiology, immunology, reproduction, aging, and cancer, are only a few of the current fertile grounds where neuroscience meets new fields. We decided to term work integrating neuroscience with other biological fields brain-body interactions. Importantly, the integration of neuroscience with other domains of biology not only enables new discoveries, but also allows us to understand how complex interactions within organisms shape emerging properties at the whole-organism level. As such, the insights obtained through such work are key to tackle important challenges ranging from medicine, to nutrition, and food security.

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This virtual seminar series on brain-body interactions aims to bring together scientists interested in exploring this interface, coming from neuroscience or other fields of biology. By providing an open and integrative forum, we aim at bringing together researchers with a neuroscience background interested in exploring new topics, and colleagues who normally do not work on the nervous system but are interested in learning more about ideas and concepts from neuroscience. As such, we ask our speakers and audience to keep an open mind and an inquiring spirit, and to leave behind the jargon which would normally be suitable for very specialized audiences.