The first webinar of Toxics, “Assessing Neurotoxicity in Aquatic Organisms: From Environmental to Human Health Implications”, was held on Wednesday 23 September 2020 and it was chaired by Dr. Demetrio Raldúa. The webinar was focused in the behavioral analysis in aquatic organisms exposed to neurotoxic compounds, emphasizing the relevance of using this apical endpoint for both environmental and human health risk assessment.

After an brief introduction given by the chair, Dr. Carlos Barata started the session with his presentation entitled: “Cognitive behaviour in the crustacean Daphnia magna. Neurological systems involved in response to light and predator avoidance”. Then, Dr. Caio Maximino de Oliveira spoke about “Mechanistic neurotoxicology with zebrafish: Relevance to human neurotoxic syndromes”.

Details of experts: Dr. Demetrio Raldúa received his Ph.D. in Veterinary Sciences from University of Zaragoza, Spain. He held post-doctoral positions in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), Center of Aquaculture-IRTA (Spain), Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain) and University of Bordeaux (France). In October 2009 he joined to the Environmental Toxicology group in the Institute of Environmental Diagnosis and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC, Spain). By using the zebrafish model, his research focuses in (1) increasing the current understanding of the environmental risk of the neurotoxic pollutants in fish larvae and (2) to develop and validate new models of human neurotoxidromes in which identifying new potential therapeutic targets and developing more effective therapies.

Dr. Carlos Barata is senior researcher at IDAEA-CSIC (Spain). His research career expands over 25 years working in different aspects of Environmental Risk Assessment of pollutants in aquatic habitats. He leaded more than 12 Research Projects and formed up to 10 PhD students. He has produced over 200 scientific papers published in specialized international journals, and 20 book chapters having an H-index = 40. His expertise include analytical chemistry, aquatic toxicology, environmental risk assessment, and toxicogenomics. His actual interest is to apply omic technologies into Risk Assessment of chemicals and to study emerging ecotoxicological effects in biota using lab and field ecotoxicological approaches.

Dr. Caio Maximino is a full professor at Universidade Federal do Sul e Sudeste do Pará, Marabá/PA-Brasil, where he works with zebrafish models in pharmacology and toxicology. His main field of interest is in the intersection of psychobiology, behavioral pharmacology, and neurotoxicology. He holds a BSa in Psychology (Unesp/Brasil) and a PhD in Neurosciences and Cell Biology (UFPA/Brasil).