I've worked a lot with grad students who have to give many presentations and have seen some of them completely freeze up and be unable to continue. One thing t

I've worked a lot with grad students who have to give many presentations and have seen some of them completely freeze up and be unable to continue. One thing that helped a young Chinese scientist was personal tutoring in a safe setting with her supervisor to build confidence. Practicing with some of your coworkers beforehand helps. It's happened to me also and the way I dealt with it was to say to the audience "I lost my train of thought" and ask them to set me back on it. Nobody spoke up so I said "I guess it wasn't that important if nobody else remembers, I'll just continue with the next slide" which got one person to speak up who was actually listening. You could do this intentionally also to find out if your audience cares about what you are saying.