Abstract Submission
Our members drive the NCM Annual Meeting program. Your perspectives, research, ideas and outlook ensure a rigorous meeting program while providing valuable contributions to ongoing research on motor control.
Abstract Submission Guide
The Annual Meeting continues to offer a variety of Oral presentations- Team (Panel, Perspective, Workshop, Tutorial) and Individual, as well as Poster session formats. All sessions are designed to be informative and interactive for all participants at the meeting and to promote vigorous discussion both at sessions and during breaks.
The NCM Board encourages established and new members alike to engage and participate in our annual meeting by leading one of the session formats or by presenting in one of the many options available to you. There are 3 streams of submissions associated with the Annual Meeting. Each type of submission has a distinct closing date.
In years when there is a Satellite Meeting organized to coincide with the Annual Meeting, there may also be a poster submission for the Satellite. The cascading set of closing dates for the Annual Meeting submissions allows members whose abstract is not accepted for early closings to submit an abstract for another format.
Accepted abstracts will be available on the meeting website.
IMPORTANT: No person can speak in more than one session each year. If an individual oral submitter is part of an accepted team oral, their individual submission will be given the opportunity to present as a poster presentation only.
Submission Deadlines
For the 2018 Annual Meeting, the following submission schedule has been established. Please refer to the submission guidelines for each of these submission types (Team, Individual) prior to submitting your abstract. Note: You must be an NCM member in good standing to submit an abstract.
Team (Multi-Author) and Individual (Oral) – Now Closed
Submission Opens: October 30, 2017
Submission Closes: November 30, 2017
Individual (Poster) – Now Closed
Submission Opens: October 30, 2017
Submission Closes: February 26, 2018
*Submission deadlines are midnight CST on the indicated submission date. For each submission type, a member may submit one (1) abstract.
IMPORTANT: Confirmations of accepted oral abstracts and Scholarships are issued via email in January. Poster acceptance are expected to be sent by late February. If you have not received a confirmation email from us by March 12th, please
Individual Oral Guidelines
Individual (Oral) Guidelines
- IMPORTANT: No person can speak in more than one session each year. If an individual oral submitter is part of an accepted team oral, their individual submission will be given the opportunity to present as a poster only.
- Ensure your NCM membership is in good standing
- Select a Presentation Theme that most closely describes your oral presentation (see list below).
- Prepare to enter your contact name, affiliation/institution name and email address.
- Prepare an abstract title (max 225 character limit).
- Prepare the abstract (max 3000 character limit – approximately 500 words).
- Submit the abstract via NCM’s online abstract management system. Please note, when submitting the abstract cut and paste it from a text editor (ie. notepad, wordpad) to ensure it does not include underlying formatting that may cause errors.
- Optional: If you are applying for a Scholarship, you must prepare your required Scholarship application documents and upload them during the abstract submission process.
- All NCM members are limited to presenting 1 (one) oral presentation (team or individual), regardless of how many proposals have been submitted
Individual Presentation Themes
Individual Presentations are invited in the following subject areas (themes):
*Control of Eye and Head Movement
*Posture and Gait
*Fundamentals of Motor Control
*Integrative Control of Movement
*Disorders of Motor Control
*Adaption and Plasticity in Motor Control
*Theoretical and Computational Motor Control
The deadline for submitting an Individual oral presentation was November 30, 2017
Individual Poster Guidelines
Poster Sessions
These sessions provide the best venue for presenting new and novel findings and includes ample discussion on-site. Posters are divided into two poster groups. Each group of posters are on display over 2 days of the meeting and include two dedicated poster sessions of 2 hours duration each. All authors in a session are expected to be present during these Poster Sessions. With refreshment breaks served in the poster room, additional ad-hoc visits and discussions can occur at any time throughout the meeting. Mini-handouts of posters are encouraged in order to stimulate ad hoc discussion, and to provide participants with a useful copy for their own reading.
Posters will be accepted based on the following styles:
Standard Poster – An individual poster submitted on behalf of one or more poster authors.
Poster Cluster – This format simply provides a means by which colleagues can combine contributions into a set of side-by-side posters that cover a coherent topic of interest.
- The Cluster leader should indicate at submission a cluster title, along with a list of presenting authors and titles for each of the posters within the cluster.
- Each presenting poster author should submit their poster as noted above, indicating the cluster leader’s name in the appropriate position in the submission form.
- Leader’s role is to coordinate the cluster and its poster presentations. Consider a common poster style. Include the cluster title at the top of each poster.
Individual Poster Submission Guidelines
- Ensure your NCM membership is in good standing
- Select a Presentation Theme that most closely describes your presentation (see list below).
- Prepare to enter your contact name, affiliation/institution name and email address.
- Prepare an abstract title (max 225, incl. spaces, character limit).
- Prepare the abstract (max 3000 character limit, incl. spaces – approximately 500 words).
- Submit the abstract via NCM’s online abstract management system. Please note, when submitting the abstract cut and paste it from a text editor (ie. notepad, wordpad) to ensure it does not include underlying formatting that may cause errors.
- Optional: If you are applying for a Scholarship, you must prepare your required Scholarship application documents and upload them during the abstract submission process. Please note the application deadline for a Scholarship is November 29th, 2017. Although poster abstracts do not close until the end of February, if you would like to be considered for a scholarship, you must submit before this deadline. Late submissions will not be considered.
- All NCM members are limited to presenting 1 (one) oral presentation (team or individual), regardless of how many proposals have been submitted
Please note: A NO PHOTOGRAPHY policy will be implemented in the poster area this year
Poster Creation Guidelines
- Poster size is limited to 114cm (width) by114cm (height)
- Submissions are welcomed by any NCM member in good standing. Student and post-doc contributions are particularly encouraged, and are required for scholarship recipients.
- If submission numbers exceed session limits, then only 2 submissions per lab may be accepted
Photography is prohibited in the poster hall
In order to protect the integrity of unpublished data, the Board has decided to prohibit taking photographs of posters or during oral sessions. As a convenient means of making posters available, authors are encouraged to consider uploading a PDF version of the poster, which will be made available on the member only area of the NCM website. If you wish to upload a PDF, please do so no later than April 22, 2018.
PDF upload Instructions:
- Please name your PDF document as follows: LastName_AbstractID (your abstract ID is included in your confirmation email)
- Please login to your existing abstract submission here
- Click ‘next’ through your submission until you get to the last page in the form, pg.4 (please note that any edits made to your abstract at this point won’t be accepted)
- At the bottom of the page click on ‘choose file’ to upload your poster PDF
- Click on the ‘finish’ button to save the document
Individual Poster Presentation Themes
Individual Presentations are invited in the following subject areas (themes):
*Control of Eye and Head Movement
*Posture and Gait
*Fundamentals of Motor Control
*Integrative Control of Movement
*Disorders of Motor Control
*Adaption and Plasticity in Motor Control
*Theoretical and Computational Motor Control
The deadline for submitting a poster presentation is February 26, 2018
Team Submission Guidelines
Team Submission Guidelines
- Ensure your NCM membership is in good standing
- Decide on your Presentation Format (see list below) and prepare your submission based on its respective requirements.
- Prepare to enter the contact name, affiliation/institution name and email address for each of the abstract team members. Please note, all team members must be NCM members in good standing at the time of the conference.
- Prepare an abstract title (max 225 character limit).
- Prepare a justification of why your session is relevant and important to NCM attendees (max 1300 character limit – approximately 200 words)
- Prepare a statement of how the composition of the proposed session reflects the diversity of the field (e.g., women, geographic location, underrepresented minorities, career stage).
- Prepare the abstract (max 3000 character limit – approximately 500 words).
- Submit the abstract via NCM’s online abstract management system. Please note, when submitting the abstract cut and paste it from a text editor (ie. notepad, wordpad) to ensure it does not include underlying formatting that may cause errors.
- Optional: Should you wish to include a supplemental one-page description of the motivation and goals of the session, its participants, and a plan for coordination, you may upload this during the submission process.
- All NCM members are limited to presenting 1 (one) oral presentation (either team or individual), regardless of how many proposals have been submitted
Team Presentation Expectations
- The most important part of the team sessions at NCM is to provide a forum for active discussion of important issues in motor control. Therefore, sufficient time must be devoted to general discussion and audience participation and not more data presentation.
- Session leaders and co-presenters should interact and coordinate their session before the meeting and meet together during the meeting to hone their session and determine ways to interact with potential discussants where appropriate.
- To ensure a rapid and efficient transition between presenters, session leaders are to consolidate all presentations for the session onto a single PC or memory stick.
- An NCM Board member will serve as the moderator for each session.
- The Board will complete session evaluations. Member contributions are welcomed.
Scholarship applications for Team participants
If the team contains a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow trainee, they may be eligible for a scholarship. Please visit the Scholarships page for more information, and have the trainee email their application and supporting documents directly to Development Officer: [email-obfuscate email=”bcorneil@uwo.ca” link_title=”Brian Corneil”]
Team Presentations Formats
Team presentations can be submitted based on one of the following presentation formats:
Panel
The panel format is NCM’s traditional session format. This session is 2 hours in duration (with at least 20 minutes devoted to group discussion), and should provide broad appeal to the community. Background, motivation and didactic elements by way of introduction are important in order to engage our various NCM sub-communities.
Guidelines
Maximum of 4 speakers per panel. Session schedules should consider:
- 10 minutes (total) of introductions, motivation and relation between presentations.
- 90 minutes of talks (approximately 15 minutes (i.e.15 slides max) per presentation with approximately 5 minutes of discussion for each presentation.
- 20 minutes of general panel discussion to close the session. In your abstract submission please indicate what the main discussion points will be during the panel discussion. This will help prepare the audience to be actively involved in the main discussion.
- Final panel discussion may include designated discussants (without slides) to serve as discussion catalysts. Discussants may include the session’s Board member/moderator and/or chosen colleagues.
- Panel members should plan ahead and meet on site before the session to review, hone and adjust the session. Cohesion between and across presentations is important.
Perspectives
This format is a recent addition to NCM. Perspective sessions are 1 ½ hours in duration, and include several different styles. Speakers will contribute their perspective on a modern challenge, including a review of the topic at hand, controversies, outlook, and speculation. Perspective styles include:
- Short Panel – emphasizing emerging areas or technologies, as well as topics novel to NCM.
- Clinical-science Interchange – synergy in the understanding of a disease (or class of diseases) from both vantages (e.g. resembling a clinical patho-physiology conference). What can we (have we) learned from clinical sources and from scientific inquiry? How has this confluence advanced our understanding, guided directions, or aided treatment?
- Controversies (or Collegiate Debates) – different perspectives and interpretations, each based upon supporting evidence. Is there a path toward reconciliation, and with what required elements or experiments?
- Historical Overview – glorious moments, breakthroughs, conflicts, or paths towards enlightenment.
Guidelines
Ideally includes 2 or 3 presenters. Session schedules should consider:
- 10 minutes (total) of introductions, motivation and relation between presentations.
- 60 minutes of talks max.
- At least 20 minutes of discussion with audience participation to close the session. In your abstract submission please indicate what the main discussion points will be during the panel discussion. This will help prepare the audience to be actively involved in the main discussion.
Technical Tutorial
Guidelines
These are didactic sessions of 1½ hours duration, with 2 to 3 faculty addressing a relatively focused area or technique with appeal to a targeted audience. Examples might include emerging technologies (e.g. intrinsic signal imaging, novel multi-array recording, working model implementations). Tutorials may be operated in parallel sessions if necessitated by time constraints.