RAMS Summer School 2016: Neurosurgery
11 and 12 July 2016
This year’s RAMS Summer School was held at the department of Neurosurgery on the 11th and 12th of July. The program, which was devised in collaboration with the NCCN (Neurochirurgisch Centrum Nijmegen), provoked a lot of enthusiasm from both sides; participating students as well as lecturers. A novelty of this year was the mixture of backgrounds of the 25 participants. Bachelor’s or master’s, biomedical sciences or medicine, psychology or molecular life sciences, all students synergizing with their unique views on the subject.
The event started on Monday morning with an official opening ceremony by professor Bartels. In the following two days, the students were submerged in a full program consisting of lectures and practically oriented education. The program included a refreshing neural anatomy course in the dissection rooms, excellent lectures by four different neurosurgeons from the Radboudumc and two eye-opening workshops. At the end of the two days, small groups of students were given two hours to prepare a mini-review plus 5-minute pitch on a scientific subject chosen by themselves.
The final pitches were held at the conference room of the Radboudumc Director’s Board. The level of the pitches was very good, especially when the short preparation time was taken into account. The students also covered a great variety of subjects, from optogenetic research techniques to peripheral nerve stimulation as a treatment for an overactive bladder, and from impulse control disorders in Parkinson’s to deep brain stimulation for epilepsy. The last group decided to concentrate primarily on the content, thus using their time to write a five-page review in two hours instead of making a PowerPoint presentation. This won them the award for the best group of the RAMS Summer School 2016. Afterwards, we asked them to write an abstract of their (mini-)review, which can be read below.
The RAMS Summer School 2016 was organized by four (former) RAMS members. They thank Guido de Jong and Dylan Henssen from the NCCN for their organizational help.
