Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry (ICONAP 2022)

Conference name: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry (ICONAP 2022)
Date: 4-5 August 2022
Location: Medan, Indonesia (Online)
Website: https://ocs.usu.ac.id/ICoNaP/ICONAP2022

Overview

TheCOVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The viruswas first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of international concern regarding COVID-19 on January 30, 2020, and later declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020. As of April 16, 2021, more than 138 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 2.98 million deaths attributed to COVID-19, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

Recommended precautions include keeping your distance, wearing a face mask in public places, ventilating and filtering the air, washing your hands, covering your mouth when sneezing or coughing, disinfecting surfaces, and monitoring and isolating yourself from exposed or symptomatic people. Several vaccines have been developed and widely distributed since December 2020. Current treatments focus on managing symptoms, but work is underway to develop therapeutic drugs that can inhibit the virus. Authorities around theworld have responded by imposing travel restrictions, lockdowns/quarantines, workplace hazard controls, and business closures. Many places have also been working to increase testing capacity and track contacts of infected people.

Neuroscience is an emerging branch of science that develops rapidly. It needs neurology, psychiatry, and psychology for us to understand it better. The aim of this conference was to educate and learn the current trends and research in neuroscience education. The 5th International Conference on Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry (ICoNaP) 2022 was a conference held by the Faculty of Medicine of Universitas Sumatera Utara for psychiatrists, neurologists, general practitioners, and other interested specialists; the theme for this year was “Exploring the Neuroscientific Impact of COVID-19.”

ICoNaP has been held annually since 2018. The conference invited both national and international speakers from many countries. Throughout these years, the committee has invited various speakers fromMalaysia, Singapore, Germany, Australia, India, Thailand, the USA, France, and Malaysia. This year, we invited both national and international speakers from the UK, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia and was held as a virtual conference.

The Virtual Approach

The committee used zoom virtual meeting and built its own platform system (https:// iconapusu2022.com) that served as the host for the 5th ICoNaP USU conference. We found a few features on this platform to be helpful for an event of this nature during the pandemic. Participants could see the conference live or the recorded version of it. There were exhibition room for sponsors to exhibit their most recent goods to participants, as well. All attendees were summoned to the conference room at the beginning of each session, where only the speakers were permitted to present their work. In the Q/A area, participants had the option to post questions and the speakers answered them. There were rooms for e-posters presentation and free papers so that the participants could present their research at the conference.

Invited Talks

In its 5th iteration, the conference served as an opportunity for researchers and experts in neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry to share their ideas, experiences, and insights. Articles and case reports would get a chance to be published in international journals, after reviewed by reviewers and selected by the editors. To this date, 920 researchers and experts participated in previous ICoNaP. Additionally, more than 100 articles and case reports have been published. This year the paper carried these various topics:
• Empowering health resources after the pandemic
• Recovering after the pandemic with better mental health
• Cognition in neurology
• Cytokine mechanism of schizophrenia, neurovascular disease, and COVID-19
• Genes in mental disorders
• Sleep disturbance during the pandemic
• Memory and epilepsy
• Other health-related topics.