Welcome to the CBU
The Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU) is an internationally leading centre for cognitive science and its translation into benefits for health and well-being. Over 120 scientists, students and support staff are based primarily at the Unit's Chaucer Road site, dedicated to research into aspects of human cognition including attention, emotion, language and memory. Specialist facilities include MRI, MEG and EEG scanners.
Help us with our research
Research at the CBU is dependent on members of the public who volunteer to take part in our studies. If you would like to help us (and earn some money), read about our volunteer panel. We welcome volunteers of all ages.
Latest news
December 2011: New funding for child research
Clinical Psychologists within the CBSU's Emotion group have recently been awarded a £250,000 grant from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) "Research for Patient Benefit" programme to look at the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within 3-8 year olds. Their previous studies have shown that young children – contrary to popular belief – are just as susceptible as older children, teenagers and adults to experiencing psychiatric problems following traumatic events such as assaults and road traffic accidents. These reactions can, in some instances, last for months or even years – with a potentially huge impact on that child's later social functioning, academic success and mental health.
The importance of treating this reaction is clear. But how? Building on previous work Tim Dalgleish, Richard Meiser-Stedman and Anna McKinnon will look at how a form of psychological treatment called cognitive behavioural therapy (or "CBT") can be tailored for this vulnerable age group. The Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit has a long history of conducting research into CBT (mainly with depressed adults). These studies show time and again that the devil is in the detail – by identifying the particular mechanisms that maintain a psychiatric disorder, more effective and efficient treatments can be developed.
This new trial – dubbed "PYCES" (Parents and Young Children after Extreme Stress) – will not only look at whether PTSD can be successfully treated using a developmentally-tailored CBT programme, but also identify much more accurately the cognitive, biological and familial factors that put a young child at risk of this kind of psychiatric disturbance.
November 2011: CBU scientists develop new methods for assessing consciousness
Researchers working at the CBU have discovered a practical and cost-effective method for assessing whether some patients who appear to be in a vegetative state may actually be conscious, but simply unable to respond. Despite rigorous clinical assessment, a significant proportion of vegetative state patients are misdiagnosed. Recent studies have proven that a significant minority of these patients are consciously aware and, in some cases, their awareness of the outside world can be detected by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While this solution is revolutionary in terms of patient care and facilitation, expense and accessibility prevent the wider use of assessing the majority of vegetative patients in this way. The new research shows that 19% of a group of patients who were entirely unresponsive and presumed to be vegetative were actually aware – a figure that exceeds previous estimates of the number of people with undetected awareness in the group.
Dr Damian Cruse, the lead author of the study and now at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, says:
"Our new method uses electroencephalography (EEG) which is relatively cheap, portable and widely available. This means that we can now go out into the community and visit patients in their residential care homes or hospitals and provide a more accurate diagnosis than was previously possible."
Professor Susan Gathercole, Director of the CBU, added:
"An accurate diagnosis is vital to enable doctors to provide the best treatment and care options available. We are very pleased that the Medical Research Council has been involved in this fascinating study, which brings us one step closer towards improving diagnostic tools for patients thought to be in a vegetative state and pinpointing levels of awareness that were not previously possible."
The researchers collaborated with colleagues from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, and the Coma Science Group, University Hospital of Liège on this study. Their findings are published online in The Lancet.
November 2011: Closing date fast approaching for 2012 PhD positions
Applications are now being accepted for our three-year PhD positions, starting in October 2012. Full details on current research topics and potential supervisors are given on our website, and details on how to apply are given in our Postgraduate Study pages. We offer three fully funded MRC studentships for UK/EU candidates, and also welcome independently funded applicants. Students are registered with the University of Cambridge, and enjoy full college membership, as well as a wide range of university benefits. Here at the CBSU we offer in-house MEG, fMRI and EEG facilities, purpose-built behavioural testing laboratories, a broad panel of volunteers and superb computing, administrative and technical support, plus a lovely working environment. Online applications must be made by 1st December to be considered.
October 2011: To the brain, it doesn't matter how you look at it
To understand what other people are thinking and feeling it is often helpful to know where they are looking. Even though such gaze perception skills are important for social behaviour, it has been unclear how the brain codes the direction of another's gaze. In a new research study published in Current Biology, Johan Carlin and colleagues at the CBSU used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study how the brain responds when viewing gazing faces. Carlin used new analysis methods to show that a particular brain region in superior temporal sulcus responds to the direction of another person's gaze. This region responded to gaze regardless of how the person's head was turned, suggesting that this brain region could tell that the same gaze direction was being signalled by, for instance, a sideways glance and a turned head. This research provides important new insights into how the brain responds to where other people are looking. One day, such findings may prove useful in understanding the problems faced by people with clinical conditions such as autism.
October 2011: New book on visual population codes edited by CBU scientist
The CBU's Nikolaus Kriegeskorte and Gabriel Kreiman of Harvard University edited the book "Visual Population Codes: Toward a Common Multivariate Framework for Cell Recording and Functional Imaging", which will appear in November with MIT Press.
The book is about the representation of visual information in populations of neurons. Although the concept of "population code" appeared decades ago in neurophysiological studies of brain function, the dominant approach to measurement and analysis has been to focus on one cell or imaging voxel at a time and characterise its selectivity. Over the past decade, researchers have begun to analyse the information in complex activity patterns across populations of neurons.
The book describes the advances brought on by this approach along with the methods that made them possible. It may serve as an introduction, overview, and reference for scientists and graduate students across disciplines who are interested in vision and, more generally, in understanding how the brain represents and processes information. The book is organised according to the flow of visual information from the retina to the highest stages of ventral-stream processing.
October 2011: Barbara Wilson wins Ramon Y Cajal award
Barbara Wilson, long time member of staff at CBU and now a Visiting Scientist at the Unit has recently received the Ramon Y Cajal award from the International Neuropsychiatric Association for outstanding contributions to neuropsychiatry. Two previous winners were Vilayanur Ramachandran and Marsel Mesulam. Her award lecture was entitled "The past, present and future of neuropsychological rehabilitation".
September 2011: CBU staff at British Science Festival
CBU scientists Tom Manly and Dean Mobbs got hip-hop as they joined a 'well cool crew' of artists and neuroscientists at a special event on 10th September at this year's British Science Festival in Bradford. Tom is the President of the British Science Association Psychology section and put together a discussion forum aimed at those with, and without, a specialized psychology/neuroscience background. Dean talked how fear occurs and develops in the brain whilst fiction author (and neuroscientist) Charles Fernyhough discussed tricks for a writer to develop suspense on the page and screen. Professor Sophie Scott of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience talked about speech production with illustrations of the amazing vocal dexterity of actor and impressionist Duncan Wisbey. Dr Zarinah Agnew (UCL) talked about motor skill learning, ably demonstrated by the current UK Beatboxing champion Patrick Hirst (aka Ball-Zee, pictured right), who gallantly stepped in a short notice for this well attended and received event. Watch his extraordinary skills here.