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This section contains news from 2009 and earlier.

December 2009: New centre for affective disorders opens in Cambridge

Affective disorders such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress can have a devastating effect on the lives of children and adults. A new centre to support research that improves understanding and treatment of these affective disorders in children, adolescents and adults opens on the 14th December in Cambridge. The Cambridge Clinical Research Centre in Affective Disorders (C2AD) will research the development and evaluation of clinical interventions for affective disorders across the lifespan and aims to promote an integrated perspective on treatment, across the various support services. C2AD will bring together NHS clinical practitioners and researchers from academic departments, uniting the affective disorders community in Cambridge.

The C2AD centre is a partnership between the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBSU), the University of Cambridge, and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT). C2AD is co-directed by Dr Tim Dalgleish from the MRC CBSU and Professor Ian Goodyer from the University of Cambridge, with Dr Rajini Ramana (CPFT) as the Clinical Director. The centre will be based at the Herchel Smith Building for Brain and Mind Sciences on the Forvie Site at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, and at the Douglas House site on Trumpington Road in Cambridge.

C2AD is already hosting a range of translational research projects. These include basic science studies examining core mind and brain processes that underpin affective disorders, the ROOTS study following teenagers at risk for depression through into early adulthood to understand onset and vulnerability, and treatment trials evaluating the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy for treatment and relapse prevention of depression and posttraumatic stress in adults and children.

To mark the launch, a one day conference is being held at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. Keynote speakers from across the UK will be talking about clinical research in affective disorders, ranging from fundamental science through to delivery of treatments in health service settings, and over 60 delegates will be attending from the academic and clinical communities. Due to demand for places registration for the event is already closed.

To learn more about C2AD contact Tim Dalgleish.

• • December 2009: Sailnule anybody? New grant awarded to CBU for language research

  • Dr Matt Davis of the CBU and Prof Kathy Rastle at Royal Holloway University of London have just been awarded a three year grant of £300,000, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a project titled "Using a word-learning paradigm to investigate three forms of generalisation in the acquisition of lexical knowledge". The research will help us understand how people learn parts of words that never occur in isolation (affixes such as -ness) from their experience with a relatively small number of full forms (e.g., kindness, vagueness, redness), and the team will conduct experiments in which people learn novel affixes (e.g., -nule) presented in novel word contexts (sleepnule, buildnule), and then test how they understand new words that contain the newly-learned units (sailnule, drinknule). The aim is that the results will provide evidence of the processes at work in first and second language acquisition.

  • • December 2009: Closing date fast approaching for 2010 PhD positions

      Applications are now being accepted for our three-year PhD positions, starting in October 2010. 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 18th December, with supporting paperwork to follow within four weeks of the online submission date.

  November 2009: The Barbara Wilson Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation

  Barbara Wilson has recently returned from Quito, Ecuador where she was visiting the centre named after her, the "Dra Barbara Wilson Centre for Neuropsychologiical Rehabilitation". Barbara gave a talk at the centre, ran a three day course for the students (studying for Masters degrees in neuropsychological rehabilitation) and spent an evening with families of people with brain injury. After retiring from the CBU last year, Barbara has continued her work around the world, and recently also spoke at our Women in Science symposium, held here at the CBU, in October.

• October 2009: Women in Science Symposium at CBU

• We are proud to have recently hosted our first Women in Science Symposium on Wednesday 28th of October in the CBU Lecture Theatre. The event, which was motivated by the idea that women in science must support and encourage one another, was organised by the CBU's newly formed Equality Committee. The symposium celebrated and showcased women senior scientists who have at some point been associated with the CBU. A packed lecture theatre enjoyed speakers sharing experiences of particular challenges they have faced as women, strategies they have developed to overcome these, insights into things they might have done differently, and suggestions on how to balance family life and career. Speakers included Susan Gathercole, Dorothy Bishop, Anne Cutler, Bundy Mackintosh, Nilli Lavie, Sophie Scott, Karalyn Patterson, Barbara Wilson, Elisabeth Hill, Kim Graham, and Vicki Bruce, as well as Jenny Brookman, chair of the Cambridge AWiSe network. Each speaker had an incredible and unique story to tell, with several themes emerging through the day. These included the tremendous value of practical and emotional support in one's professional and personal life, the beneficial aspects of cultivating self-confidence and the courage to take risks, and the importance of inspirational role models and/or mentors at key stages in one's career. There was general consensus that all women in science, irrespective of stage of career, serve as role models for those who are more junior, and with this comes a certain level of responsibility. It was also emphasized that it is important to be aware of the gender schemas that we all have and how these can undervalue women's contributions to science and disadvantage women from advancing to senior positions. The event was a great success with many asking for it to be repeated annually.

  The full report on the day can be found here. Film footage of the event is also available in part one, and part two (for ease of loading).

• October 2009: Adrian Owen on BBC Horizon

• One of the CBU's experts on consciousness, Dr Adrian Owen, appeared on the BBC Horizon program this week (Tuesday 20th October), talking about his work with vegetative state (VS) patients. In a program with Professor Marcus du Sautoy, titled 'The Secret You', Adrian describes research that shows how brain imaging can be used to detect awareness in VS patients. The program went on to feature collaborative research between the CBU, the Division of Anaesthesia and Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre at Addenbrooke's Hospital which uses similar methods to detect changes in awareness during sedation and anaesthesia. This program is available to watch on the BBC iplayer for the next month:
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nhv56#p004tzs3

• October 2009: Applications open for 2010 PhD positions

  Applications are now being accepted for our three-year PhD positions, starting in October 2010. 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.

• • September 2009: Scientists find that individuals in vegetative states can learn

  • CBSU scientist Dr Tristan Bekinschtein has again been in the news with the publication of a paper that shows scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in the online edition of /Nature Neuroscience/.
    
    It is the first time that scientists have tested whether patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states can learn. By establishing that they can, it is believed that this simple test will enable practitioners to assess the patient's consciousness without the need of imaging.
    
    This study was done as a collaborative effort between the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (Argentina). By using classical Pavlonian conditioning, the researchers played a tone immediately prior to blowing air into a patient's eye. After some time training, the patients would start to blink when the tone played but before the air puff to the eye.
    
    This learning requires conscious awareness of the relation between stimuli - the tone precedes and predicts the puff of air to the eye. This type of learning was not seen in the control subjects, volunteers who had been under anaesthesia.
    
    The researchers believe that the fact that these patients can learn associations shows that they can form memories and that they may benefit from rehabilitation.
    
    Lead author Dr Tristan Bekinschtein said: "This test will hopefully become a useful, simple tool to test for consciousness without the need for imaging or instructions. Additionally, this research suggests that if the patient shows learning, then they are likely to recover to some degree."
    
    In 2006, Adrian Owen from this Unit and from the Cambridge Impaired Consciousness Group at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Unit showed, using functional imaging, showed that patients in vegetative states (as defined by behavioural assessment in the clinic) can in fact be conscious despite being unable to show consistent voluntary movements.

  • The paper 'Classical conditioning in the vegetative and minimally conscious state' will be published in the Advanced Online Publication of /Nature Neuroscience/ on 20 September 2009. This study was funded by an Antorchas Foundation grant (Tristan.), a Marie Curie IIF grant (Tristan), a StartUp grant (Manes), the Human Frontiers Science Program (Sigman) and a Medical Research Council Acute Brain Injury Collaborative grant (Owen, Coleman and Pickard).

  • September 2009 : Student wins prestigious essay prize

  • • One of our PhD students has recently won another award for his essay writing skills. Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky won a highly commended prize in the Max Perutz Science Writing Competition 2009, winning a £250 prize and attending a highly enjoyable prize giving dinner at the Gherkin in London. Our congratulations to Alejandro on his achievement.

  • August 2009: Test Your Brain!

• This month, Dr Adam Hampshire and Dr Adrian Owen of the CBU have launched Cambridge Brain Sciences, a free website for members of the public and the wider scientific community to assess their cognitive function using rigorously tested and scientifically proven tests of memory, attention, reasoning and planning. The website was put together over two years with a grant from MRC Technology's Development Gap Fund in conjunction with web agency Studio 24 and will be featured on the BBC1 programme 'Bang Goes The Theory on Monday 31st August at 7pm. Adrian says "We've already had hundreds of people sign up and start testing their own cognitive function. The data, which is collected anonymously, will be incredible useful for our research into the causes and effects of brain damage and disease." Anybody can login here for free, test their brain function online, and compare themselves to other users from all over the world!

• August 2009: Argentinian waiters, researchers and memory recall

Buenos Aires boasts impressive waiters, whose minds are worth studying, according to the paper Strategies of Buenos Aires Waiters to Enhance Memory Capacity in a Real-Life Setting, published in the journal Behavioural Neurology, and co-authored by CBU researcher Tristan Bekinschtein (also Argentinian).

"Typical Buenos Aires senior waiters memorise all orders from clients and take the orders, without written support, of as many as 10 persons per table. They also deliver the order to each and every one of the customers who ordered it without asking or checking." And most of the time, they get it right.

For more on this story, as covered by the Guardian, click here.

• August 2009: Women in Science, and on the radio

• Dr Jessica Grahn of the CBU will be appearing on Radio 4's Women's Hour programme today (11th August) with presenter Jenni Murray and fellow scientist Dr Katie Overy from the University of Edinburgh. They will be discussing music and how it affects us in lots of ways - it can invoke memories, provoke emotions, and move us to activity (dancing, singing along, making music ourselves). Looking at how the brain responds when a person is listening to music tells us a lot about the role the brain plays in memory, emotion and activity, and how these things are related to each other. Music also gives neurologists a way into talking about the 'nature/nurture' debate by comparing the brains of talented musicians with those of ordinary people. Jenni, Jessica and Katie will discuss what music can tell us about the kinds of beings we are.

• Jessica will also bring a similar discussion to the Nash Ensemble meeting to be held this weekend at Windsor Great Park -The Nash Ensemble and the Musical Brain, Great music and why we love it.

• August 2009: Funding obtained for project to study Developmental Dyscalculia

  It is estimated that 3-6% of children and adults have Developmental Dyscalculia, a severe difficulty in arithmetic that has great costs to the individual and to society. A recent government report estimated dyscalculia dramatically reduces lifetime earnings and achievement in GCSE high school exams. Other studies have estimated it raises the risk of depression. This new project will investigate the neural and cognitive basis of Developmental Dyscalculia, using carefully targeted tasks, and electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure changes in the brain during development. It will focus in particular on understanding the contributions of disruption of parietal lobe function to Developmental Dyscalculia.

• The project is a collaboration between Denes Szucs (Faculty of Education), Usha Goswami (FoE), Timothy Rowland (FoE) and our own Rhodri Cusack. It has been awarded £1 million from the MRC, for brain imaging equipment and staff, and will commence in October 2009.

• For more on this story click here.

  July 2009: Successful grant application for DECODER project

• The CBU has just been informed we were successful in our recent FP7 European grant application entitled 'Deployment of Brain-Computer Interfaces for the Detection of Consciousness in Non-Responsive Patients (DECODER)'. The project is aimed at exploring the elusive topic of consciousness recovery after severe brain injury. In particular, a central effort will be dedicated to developing Brain-Computer Interfaces that may allow severely brain injured patients to regain the ability, to some extent, to express their thoughts and interact with their environment. The lead on this project is Andrea Kubler in Germany and the total grant (across all centres, including the CBU) is 3.9 million Euros. Our lead scientist on the project is Dr Martin Monti, one of the co-applicants to the grant. The CBU will gain a post-doc position, equipment, hardware and various licenses, plus significant scanning costs. We plan to start work in February 2010.

• July 2009: CBU team at the summer festivals, and it's work, work, work…

  Drs Adrian Owen and Jessica Grahn, and PhD students Aidan Horner and Becky Lawson have been touring the summer music festivals, not playing music but giving talks and demonstrations about brains! Recent 'gigs' include the Latitude Festival and the Secret Garden Party. Adrian talks about brain training, Jessica about music and the brain, and Aidan and Becky do cake brain workshops, where Becky makes cakes that are in the shape of a brain, ices and paints the lobes of the brain different colours, then dissects the cake-brain in a 30 minute workshop about brain history, anatomy and function. The cakes are edible and at the end everyone gets a cup of tea and a bit of cake-brain to eat. These workshops were started last year though through the Guerilla Science initiative and are proving a big success on the festival scene. Another example of the CBU making science educational, entertaining, and edible!
• For more on this story visit the Guerilla Science website - Adrian, Jessica, Becky and Aidan.

• July 2009: John Duncan elected to Fellowship of British Academy

• We are delighted to announce that John Duncan, Assistant Director of the CBU, and an Honorary Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge has been elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy. John researches the psychological and neural mechanisms of selective attention and general intelligence, and his research uses a variety of different methods including cognitive psychology, studies of brain damage, functional brain imaging and neurophysiology. The British Academy is the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, the counterpart to the Royal Society which exists to serve the natural sciences, and of which John was also elected a fellow last year.

  Warmest congratulations to John on his FBA – another very well deserved recognition of his contribution to neuroscience.

• This story is also covered on the University news site and the British Academy site.

• July 2009: Student wins two essay awards

  One of our PhD students has recently won another award for his essay writing skills. Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky won second prize in a national science writing competition, run by Bosch Technology Horizons Award, in association with The Independent and the Royal Academy of Engineering, which offered young people in two categories the chance to answer the question "How can technology and engineering provide innovative solutions to today's global challenges?". The Technology Horizons Award, now in its fourth year, encourages students to think creatively about the changes and challenges facing the world and to highlight the importance of technology and engineering to young people. Last year Alejandro won highly commended in the same competition, so we're hoping for first prize next year!

  Alejandro has also just been short-listed for the in the Max Perutz Science Writing Competition 2009, and will attend the award ceremony in August at the Gherkin in London, where the winner and runners up will be announced. He also gets the chance to take part in a writing masterclass.

  Our congratulations to Alejandro on both of these achievements, and we wish him good luck with the results of the Max Perutz prize.

May 2009: Want to improve your vocabulary? Just sleep on it!

• 

  New words are only fully learned when your brain has had a chance to sleep on them. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientists at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge and the University of York have been able to follow the path the brain takes when a person is trying to learn new words. The images provide the first evidence that two distinct brain systems are involved depending on whether new words have been consolidated overnight or not.

They found that there is a division of labour between the parts of the brain that initially record the sound of a new word and other parts that enable those sounds to be recognised or spoken quickly.

CBSU researcher Dr Matt Davis, the lead author on the paper said:

''Although you can learn new words easily, our research suggests your brain doesn't store that word in the same way as words you already know until the next day. The change between these two stages of learning appears to happen overnight and most likely involves sleep. However, more research is needed to understand what happens during sleep that changes the brain's response.''

In the first experiment, English speakers were asked to learn two sets of fictitious new words on successive days. The words they learnt included 'alcohin', similar to a real word alcohol, and 'caravoth', similar to caravan. While people could learn and remember both sets of new words, it was only words that had been learned on the day before that could be recognised and produced as quickly and efficiently as real words. In combination with previous research, which showed similar changes to new words after twelve hours including time spent asleep, but not after equivalent time spent awake, these results suggest that learning of new words is only complete once overnight consolidation has occurred.

In a second experiment, the volunteers were again trained on two sets of new words, and tested whilst their brain activity was monitored using fMRI. The results showed two different effects of learning, depending on when the words were learned. For words that were entirely unfamiliar, elevated brain activity was seen in a part of the brain associated with new learning: the hippocampus. In comparison brain activity in the cortex—the part of the brain that stores familiar words—only changed for those words that were learnt on the previous day and had been consolidated overnight at the time of scanning.

Professor Gareth Gaskell at the University of York who initiated the research explains:

''This is the first evidence from neuroimaging to show that there are two brain systems involved in different stages of learning spoken words. Putting this together with our previous research, we can see the two systems in operation. The hippocampus learns quickly, but only stores new words in isolation. Later, a slower form of learning takes over in the cortex, and particularly in the temporal lobe. It seems that only a day after initial learning, once overnight sleep has taken place, does the cortex respond to new vocabulary in a word-like way''.

Davis, M.H., Di Betta, A., Macdonald, M.J.E., and Gaskell, M.G. (2009) "Learning and consolidation of novel spoken words." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(4), 803-820. <http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/personal/pubs/davis_jocn2009.pdf>

• May 2009: CBU scientists and fMRI suite on Professor Regan's Nursery, BBC2

  Dr Jessica Grahn and other scientists in the CBU appeared recently on popular BBC2 program Professor Regan's Nursery, in an episode where Professor Lesley Regan of St Mary's Hospital, London, investigated the lucrative world of children's products. From snack foods to educational toys, she aimed to discover if the huge range of goods available for today's kids means they are destined to grow up healthier and smarter than the rest of us. Amongst these educational aids, the 'Mozart effect' is increasingly being marketed as a way of improving intelligence in young children, by introducing classical music at an early age, and is an area where Dr Grahn has done much research.

  In the programme, Dr Grahn talks to Professor Regan about the science behind the marketing hype, and scans the Professor listening to music in the CBU fMRI machine. Professor Regan's brain response is compared to that of expert violinist Caroline Whiting, a CBU PhD student. The episode also features Steve Eldridge, one of our radiographers for the MRI machine, and all segments were filmed here at the Unit earlier this year. You can see the whole program on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k7976 or an edited extract here
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy8r8q9VRis&feature=channel_page

• March 2009: New study provides evidence that Microsoft's sensory innovation aids memory recall

• SenseCam helps advance the study of neuroscience by enabling memory recall and opening the pathway for the development of new rehabilitation treatments

  Results of a new study, published today in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry with Practical Neurology, suggest that Microsoft Research's innovative SenseCam technology can help people who have suffered from memory loss by enabling them to recall previously inaccessible memories. The fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) study is one of a number taking place globally to determine the impact of SenseCam on patients with severe memory loss. Developed by Microsoft Research's Cambridge (UK) laboratory team, SenseCam is a specialised wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without any user intervention. It is fitted with a wide-angle lens that captures nearly everything in the patient's field-of-view, providing an ongoing sensory 'aide memoire'. There are currently 700,000 people with dementia in the UK alone. Despite the large percentage of the population affected by memory problems, rehabilitation methods have not previously benefitted from any significant technology breakthroughs. Tools that exist to improve memory, such as alarms, diaries and calendars, are often especially difficult for cognitively impaired people to use and therefore have limited effectiveness.

  Microsoft Research has been conducting clinical trials to evaluate SenseCam as a memory aid for patients with diagnosed memory loss conditions, including those with Alzheimer's. Its most recent study just concluded, run in collaboration with Addenbrooke's Hospital and the MRC (Medical Research Council) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, investigated how SenseCam affects neurological activity in different areas of the brain. Dr Emma Berry, clinical neuropsychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and the University of Hertfordshire, cites in her latest paper the case of a woman with amnesia who has started to recall and review past events by using the SenseCam device. The new paper suggests that using SenseCam to record and review images of past events provides improvements in autobiographical memory, even when a patient has a severe amnesic syndrome."Until now, the neural basis for our patient's memory improvement has been unknown" says Dr Emma Berry "but through the results of this study, we've found evidence to suggest that these events were remembered and not just learned from excessive exposure of the SenseCam images. Our fMRI study shows that when she looks at the images, she not only remembers the event, which is incredible given the level of her amnesic syndrome, but that she activates part of the brain associated with normal episodic memory. Dr Adrian Owen, a senior scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit where the patient was scanned added "Brain Imaging techniques such as fMRI are now beginning to contribute dramatically to our understanding of the causes of various clinical diseases and how devastating conditions such as profound memory loss might best be tackled. This is one very exciting example of that. Our brain scans show why this patient has such a poor memory, but more importantly, they give us some important new clues about how it is that Sensecam improves it".

  For more on this new technology and how it can be used visit the Microsoft Research news site.

  ---

• March 2009: Exploring Mind and Brain

  An entertaining and educational evening of demonstrations and lectures took place at the CBU on Wednesday 18^th March. "Exploring Mind and Brain" was held as part of the Cambridge Science Festival and featured three of our top scientists giving fascinating talks on their fields of interest, with lots of our researchers on hand to run demonstrations and experiments for people to try. For more information see the attached programme.

  March 2009: Project for Brain Awareness Week 2009 selected for funding

  The Dana Foundation has given a grant in support of European Brain Awareness Week (March 16 – 21, 2009) to one of our scientists, Natasha Sigala, to produce a brain-related set of activities for pre-school children. Introduction to the brain for preschool children will aim to inform about the brain and its functions in an age-appropriate, fun and interactive way. Natasha will make the children aware of the brain's existence and importance, and why we should protect it e.g. why we need to wear helmets and seatbelts, why we need to eat properly and get enough sleep. An early introduction to the brain and nervous system helps the children understand the importance of keeping healthy and safe. It also introduces the children to the idea that the brain is something we know a lot about and that we can study more, in order to prevent and cure diseases. A range of activities from readings, games, jigsaws and making brains with play dough will be run by Natasha and Tristan Beckinschtein at the local pre-school nursery in Chaucer Road.

• February 2009: Video used to detect subtle forms of a serious neurological condition

• Video may have killed the radio star and cause us to spend much too much time on YouTube but, according to a forthcoming paper in the journal Neuropsychology, it may help to detect milder forms of a debilitating neurological condition. Researchers with the Medical Research Council in Cambridge (UK) in the paper report work with patients who show a curious lack of awareness for the left side of space. Such "Unilateral Spatial Neglect" is caused by damage to the right hand side of the brain by stroke and affects thousands of people in the UK alone. It can have very dramatic effects. For example, patients may only wash and dress the right side of their bodies, may eat food only from the right side of the plate, and can completely ignore people approaching from the left. There is also troubling evidence that the disorder can slow down recovery more generally, leading people to spend more time in hospitals and nursing homes. Such findings show the importance of detecting even mild forms of the condition, currently commonly assessed using simple bedside tasks such as asking patients to cross out all the small stars scattered over a page. Researchers at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit looked at whether videoing patients as they took these tests increased the sensitivity of the measurement. Having an accurate record or where and when patients did their crossing out had a number of benefits, and this is very difficult to track accurately without video. Such features are important given indications that general levels of disorganisation may be prolonging the disorder.

• For more information on these findings, click here. To learn more about unilateral neglect click here or here.

• Envy and pleasure do go together (February 2009)

  The part of the brain that processes feelings of reward is more active when an envied person suffers a misfortune, than when the unfortunate individual is not the object of envy. The finding comes from a brain activity study focused on Schadenfreude, the name given to pleasure derived from another's misfortune. The study results are published in Science. The Schadenfreude study was led by Dr Hidehiko Takahashi of Tokoyo Medical and Dental University in Japan. Dr Dean Mobbs of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, a co-author on the paper, said ''We captured images of what happens in the brain when a person feels pleasure as the result of another's misfortune. The results clearly showed increased activation in the greater ventral striatum, a region implicated in many types of reward.'' The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to gather the data. This works by measuring blood flow to different parts of the brain and producing a corresponding image to show where in the brain cells are busiest when responding to different scenarios. The results show that the part of the brain that deals with thoughts about pain, known as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), also processes envy. And that activity in the dACC is greatest the more superior an envied person is perceived to be. Brain activity of student volunteers was analysed to determine the effects of envy and whether Schadenfreude has a biological basis. When the most envied student suffered a misfortune, activity in the greater ventral striatum was highest. The researchers believe this reveals that envy does have neuro-cognitive mechanisms, meaning that there is brain activity linked to such thoughts, and that social comparisons are central to the processing of these emotions by the brain. Dr Mobbs explained: ''These findings frame a theory that envy is a condition in which a person experiences cognitive aspects of pain, and that this pain is relieved when something unfortunate happens to an envied person: that is, Schadenfreude occurs.'' Dr Mobbs added "For example, the bragging neighbour who loses his expensive new car during the economic downturn would presumably make most people feel some satisfaction." Original research paper: When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude is published in Science.

• Lifetime achievement award for Barbara Wilson (January 2009)

• Neuropsychologist Professor Barbara Wilson, a key member of the Unit from 1990-2008, has been honoured by the British Psychological Society with the 2008 Award for Lifetime Achievement to Professional Psychology for her work with brain injury rehabilitation and neurological disorders.

  For over 30 years Barbara has been dedicated to brain injury rehabilitation, in both clinical practice and clinical research, and is an accomplished academic and dedicated practitioner.

  A key issue for Barbara was raising awareness of the need for treatment of psychological problems after brain injury. Her skill lay in the ability to make these complex topics understandable and applicable to the everyday work of a range of healthcare professionals. Her contributions to numerous television and radio programmes on cognitive problems after brain injury has helped to educate the lay audiences about the psychological consequences of acquired brain injury.

  Barbara's dedication is reflected in the number of awards she has received from scientific, professional and groups representing people who have suffered a brain injury. She is a Fellow of the Society, The Academy of Medical Sciences and The Academy of Learned Societies in Social Sciences and was awarded an OBE in 1998 for services to medical rehabilitations.

  From 1990 until her recent retirement Barbara was employed as a senior scientist here at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, and she was instrumental in developing the Oliver Zangwill Centre (part of Cambridgeshire Community Services) for Neuropsychological rehabilitation in 1996. The Centre provides an intensive holistic neuropsychology rehabilitation day programme which is recognised worldwide for its excellence. She has also had 17 books, over 250 journal articles published and established 10 widely used neuropsychological tests.

  As Professor Huw Williams, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology commented; 'Barbara transformed the area of neuro-rehabilition by inspiring professionals, survivors of injury or disease, and policy shapers with her enthusiasm, intellect, wit and perseverance. Barbara is a role model for those who aspire to make a contribution to society through psychology.'

  We are delighted to congratulate Barbara on this outstanding award.

Paul Bertelson - a tribute

The Unit would like to pay tribute to Paul Bertelson who died on the 26^th November 2008. Paul was Professor Emeritus at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and a long-standing friend of the Unit. As a young scientist, he visited the then Applied Psychology Unit (APU) for a sabbatical year in 1957 and again for six months in 1964. During that time, among other things, he carried out seminal work on card sorting and reaction time, focussing on the issue of sequential dependencies. Paul last visited the Unit in 2005 to attend the APU Legacy Conference, and this website has a video of his lecture in which he reflects with great charm and humour both on the science being carried out in the late 1950's, and on the staff in the Unit at that time. Three publications that bear his name are in the CBU bibliography.

Seen here are two archive images of Bertelson's laboratory and equipment in the basement of Chaucer Road in 1957. He built all the equipment himself with the help of the senior technician at the time, Jock Davidson.

Paul was an influential figure in European Psychology throughout his career. In 1959 he founded the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology in Brussels. Later, he was one of a small group who launched the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. He will be remembered as an exceptional scholar with a truly engaging personality.

• The history of the CBU – a new archive (October 2008)

  This month we are pleased to launch a splendid new facility for anyone interested in our past – a greatly expanded History section, including an exciting interactive Timeline and Electronic Archive. Historians of science and anyone interested in our current work here will be fascinated to read about the research conducted at the CBU (formerly known as the Applied Psychology Unit) over the last 65 years. The new history section incorporates summary progress reports extending from work conducted in World War II right up to the present day. The reports can be accessed either through visiting the Electronic Archive, which contains full listings all published works, plus archive photos and film, or by visiting our new interactive Timeline. The Timeline graphically illustrates aspects of how our science has changed over the years as well as the development of our infrastructure. You can click on key features of the timeline to get access to more detailed information.

  The site also contains full records of two conferences that debated the nature and significance of our past research work. For one of these conferences, the APU Legacy Conference held here at Chaucer Road in 2005, we also offer a full video record of the conference proceedings. You can watch many of the key researchers presenting their views about working here on different research issues.

• Visit the History Section for full coverage of all the research work done here in bygone eras. We hope you enjoy this new facility and would love to hear your feedback.

• Student wins two essay awards (October 2008)

• One of our second year year students has recently won two awards for his essay writing skills. Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky won a highly commended prize in a national science writing competition, run by Bosch Technology Horizons Award, in association with The Independent and the Royal Academy of Engineering, which offered young people in two categories the chance to answer the question, "How is technology and engineering driving change in a country of your choice?". The Technology Horizons Award, now in its third year, encourages students to think creatively about the changes and challenges facing the world and to highlight the importance of technology and engineering to young people. Read more on this competition.

• Alejandro then went on to win a further prize on a totally different topic with his entry 'The smartphone of the future: A powerhouse or a mere terminal?' in the Symbian Smart Phone Student Essay contest. The theme for the contest was 'The next wave of smartphone innovation', and there were ten winners who all received cash prizes of £1000 each. Read more on this story.

• Our congratulations to Alejandro on both of these awards.

• Major grant awarded for recovery of consciousness study (July 2008)

• Despite several recent scientific advances, marked public interest, and broad needs for systematic research, recovery of consciousness after severe brain injury remains poorly studied and under-funded. At the heart of the problem is the surprising degree of diagnostic uncertainty that may be found at the bedside, even for patients with no evidence of behavioural responsiveness. Across the range of behaviourally defined states from vegetative state (no evidence of self or environmental awareness), minimally conscious state (at least some evidence of awareness), and up to locked-in state (full consciousness with no motor control), there are patients whose level of consciousness cannot be determined with certainty at the bedside.
  
  Recent research led by Dr Adrian M. Owen, a senior scientist at the CBU, has shown that functional neuro-imaging can be used to reveal signs of preserved cognitive function and even conscious awareness in some patients who behaviourally appear to be entirely non-responsive (Owen et al., Science, 313, 1402, 2006). A research grant totalling approximately $1 million USD per year, for 8 years, has recently been awarded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation (USA) to a multinational collaborative group that includes the Cambridge team. The primary goal of this multicentred grant is to establish an international standard for the assessment of recovery of consciousness following severe brain injury.
  
  The award to Cambridge comprises the UK component of a multinational collaborative grant that includes Dr Owen, Dr Martin Coleman and Professor John Pickard at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, Cambridge, plus colleagues at CASBI/Weill-Cornell-Rockefeller University/the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute/Columbia fMRI Laboratory (New York, USA), the University of Liege (Liege, Belgium) and The Racah Institute of Physics/The Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation (Jerusalem, Israel). The international bid was led by Professor Niko Schiff of CASBI/Weill-Cornell-Rockefeller University, New York.

• For further information about Adrian's work here at the Unit read more here.

• Introducing CHIRP (July 2008)

• Dr Bob Carlyon has teamed up with colleagues at Addenbrooke's hospital and Cambridge University to seek ways of alleviating deafness and hearing impairment. The Cambridge Hearing Instrument Research Programme (CHIRP) has recently be named as a "Centre of Excellence" by the charity Deafness Research UK, which has pledged to raise funds to support their research. Find out more about DRUK, and more about Bob's work.

• Tom Manly awarded British Psychological Society Spearman Medal (June 2008)

• We are delighted to announce that Tom Manly has been awarded the prestigious Spearman Medal by the British Psychological Society. This award is given in recognition of outstanding published work in Psychology. Recipients are invited to deliver the Spearman Medal Lecture at the Society's Annual Conference, at which they will be presented with the Medal and a commemorative certificate. Speaking of the award, Dr Manly said: 'I am delighted with the award, both personally and for those of us working in the difficult area of brain injury rehabilitation. I am indebted to the many colleagues who have contributed to the work cited and to the Medical Research Council for their support and for creating an environment in which clinicians can work alongside academic psychologists to the benefit of both fields.'

• Our warmest congratulations to Tom on this well deserved award.

• John Duncan elected Fellow of Royal Society (May 2008)

  We are delighted to announce that John Duncan, Assistant Director of the CBU, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his work on neural mechanisms underlying higher cognitive function. Combining experiments in human behaviour, focal brain lesions, functional neuroimaging, and single cell physiology, his work has uncovered basic cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention, intelligence and awareness. His discoveries extend from a basis for selective attention in competitive neural functions of the visual cortex, to adaptive response properties of prefrontal neurons and their role in control of behaviour. Addressing the cellular basis for aspects of higher cognitive function, John's work is a major step in linking mind to brain.

  John has worked at the Unit since October 1978, and will shortly be celebrating 30 years with the CBU - another extraordinary achievement! Warmest congratulations to John on his FRS – a very well deserved recognition of his contribution to neuroscience.

• March 2008 - Cambridge Science Festival event - "Exploring Mind and Brain".

• On Wednesday 19th March, the Unit held an informative evening of demonstrations and talks, as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, attended by over 50 members of the public. Each year we hold a different event as part of the Science Festival, along with many of the other Cambridge MRC Units. Details of next year's events will be published in the autumn, meanwhile you can see the 2008 programme for full details of this year's event, as an example of what to expect next time.

News Archive

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MEG investigation funding secured (Dec 2007)

The MRC CBU has secured industrial funding from Glaxo-Smith-Kline to evaluate the use of our new Magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology for clinical applications (in collaboration with Prof William Marslen-Wilson and Dr Rik Henson of the CBU, and Prof Ed Bullmore of GSK).

A randomised control trial of the impact of electronically delivered 'content-free' cueing on psychosocial functioning following brain injury (December 2007)

A team of researchers and clinicians from the Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, and the University of Glasgow have been awarded a grant of approximately £250,000 by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme. The team includes CBU scientists Tom Manly, Barbara Wilson and Jessica Fish. The grant is set to employ two full time researchers over 36 months to on "a randomised control trial of the impact of electronically delivered 'content-free' cueing on psychosocial functioning following brain injury". It is a full scale clinical evaluation of techniques developed and tested in smaller scale research at the CBU (Fish, et al. in press; Manly, et al. 2002; Manly, et al. 2004).

Following brain injury, many patients have problems achieving day-to-day tasks due to memory, attentional and executive impairments. However, there are few well-controlled studies that demonstrate effectiveness of training or compensatory strategies on everyday behaviour. One exception to this is a simple paging system (NeuroPage; Hersch and Treadgold, 1992) that sends messages to people with memory and/or planning problems, reminding them of their day-to-day tasks. A series of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this system (Wilson et al., 1997, 2001, 2005; Fish et al., in press). More recently, research conducted at the MRC-CBU suggests that a so-called 'content free' alert, a simple 'bleep' associated with the instruction to stop and think, or to pay attention to the task at hand, can improve brain injured participants' performance on laboratory tasks (Manly et al., 2002, 2004), and a researcher-defined task taking place over a two-week time period (Fish et al., 2007). This type of general reminder has the potential to benefit a much wider array of tasks than those addressed by systems like NeuroPage, where tasks tend to be specific and regularly occurring, such as taking medication. However, the effect of this technique on patients' completion their own day-to-day tasks has yet to be examined.

The RfPB grant will fund a randomised controlled crossover trial to study the effect of 'content free' alerts delivered to brain injured participants via mobile phone on patients' achievement of identified day-to-day tasks. Effects of the strategy upon both patient and carer well-being will also be examined. If the research provides support for this technique, a service will be developed to efficiently translate these findings into benefits for patients. Subsidiary research questions relating to the external validity of clinical tests of cognitive function will also be addressed within the context of this study (i.e. correspondence between performance on standardised assessments and target attainment at baseline).

Alleviating anxiety through cognitive bias modification (CBM) October 2007

Bundy Mackintosh (University of East Anglia) is awarded a 3-year grant of £270,360 from the Wellcome Trust entitled "Aleviating anxiety through cognitive bias modification (CBM)". The grant will be based at the University of East Anglia and at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, where Tim Dalgleish and Barney Dunn will be collaborators. Other collaborators include researchers from Anglia Ruskin University, the University of California, Davis and the University of Western Australia, Perth.

Emotional disorders diminish life quality and rob nations of large numbers of productive citizens. Research shows that normal balanced information processing ability is a critical casualty of excessive anxiety. For example, anxious individuals notice more upsetting than pleasant information in newspapers, and often interpret something ambiguous as if it were threatening, such as 'seeing' sinister threats lurking in shadows at night. Until recently, it was unclear if this mental processing style might be a cause of anxiety, or arise as a secondary consequence of feeling anxious. To resolve this 'chicken and egg' question, the scientists have devised "training" methods that induce a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations in a more positive way. Importantly, modifying these biases improves people's mood and reactions to stress. This research aims to use this new technique to advance understanding of anxiety and enhance treatment possibilities.

The proposal combines strands aimed at :

1. boosting theoretical knowledge by developing vital measurement tools and assessing circumstances and details of individual's different responses to anxiety and how to predict who will benefit most from the 'training', and underlying mechanisms, and
2. practical advancement and understanding of the use of the technique in everyday and clinical situations.

Basic neural mechanisms of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve (June 2007)

Bob Carlyon and his colleagues in Leuven, Belgium, have been awarded a grant of approximately 0.25 million Euros for a project entitled "Basic neural mechanisms of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve". Their research aims to identify new ways of stimulating the auditory nerve of deaf patients fitted with a cochlear implant. They hope to understand how and why the nerve responds to these new forms of stimulation, with the ultimate aim of improving speech understanding in noisy situations.

British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Prize (May 2007)

Andy Calder is awarded the British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Prize for the paper:

A Calder & A Young, Understanding the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(8), 641-653, 2005.

This award recognises outstanding published contributions to research in Cognitive Psychology. Eligible publications are scientific papers or book chapters that report novel observations or provide significant theoretical insight into human cognition.

Grant to study the neural basis of rhythm perception (May 2007)

Jessica Grahn and Dr J Devlin McAuley (Director of the HP Scott Centre for Neuroscience, Mind and Brain, Bowling Green State University) are awarded a 2-year grant from the GRAMMY foundation to study the neural basis of rhythm perception.

Barbara Wilson elected as President of the Encephalitis Society (March 2007)

Barbara Wilson is elected as President of the Encephalitis Society. She takes up office in October 2007.

Industrial funding for new studentships secured (March 2007)

The MRC CBU has secured industrial funding from Elekta Neuromag for two PhD studentships to investigate new analysis methods and potential clinical applications of our new Magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology (in collaboration with Prof Friedemann Pulvermuller, Dr Yury Shytrov and Dr Rik Henson).

One of our Scientists meets the PM (March 2007)

Anna Adlam, who was a Postdoc at the Unit until recently, attended a reception for young scientists at No 10 Downing St, given in recognition of their contribution to increasing young people's awareness of science.

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Cambridge Science Festival 2007 event (March 2007)

Our Cambridge Science Festival 2007 event was held on Saturday 24 March, when around 80 members of the public heard about the exciting research being conducted here.

EU 'New Emerging Science and Technology' funding awarded (January 2007)

Friedemann Pulvermuller is awarded EU "New Emerging Science and Technology" funding for a 2-year project entitled "What it means to communicate". This award is held in collaboration with the University of Parma and the University of Sunderland.

New brain rehabilitation centre is named after CBU scientist (January 2007)

Dr Martha De La Torre, a neuropsychologist of Quito Ecuador is opening a new brain injury rehabilitation centre in Quito and is going to call this CENTRO DE REHABILITACION NEUROLOGICO INTEGRAL CERENI "BARBARA A. WILSON". This centre will accept people with non-progressive brain injury and will be staffed by neuropsychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists.

William Marslen-Wilson elected as President of the Experimental Psychology Society (January 2007)

Congratulations to William Marslen-Wilson on his election as President of the Experimental Psychology Society. He will take up office in 2008.

Grants for research on morphological processing (January 2007)

Matt Davis has been awarded two grants to continue his long-standing collaboration with Professor Kathy Rastle for research on morphological processing.

1. Kathy Rastle, Matt Davis "Learning Morpheme: Insights from Skilled Readers". Leverhulme Research Project Grant. (3 years)
2. Matt Davis, Kathy Rastle, Catherine-Marie Longtin "Route emphasis in morphological processing", British Academy, Small Project Grant (1 year)

Hedwig Gockel elected Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (December 2006)

Hedwig Gockel is elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.

New MEG facility installed at the Unit (December 2006)

A new Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) facility is installed at the Unit. This represents an investment of £1.5million by the MRC in the future of research using imaging technology and is in addition to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging facility installed at the end of 2005. Together, these advanced technologies provide a valuable resource for the CBU and all its partners within the Cambridge imaging community.

Barbara Wilson giving talks in Australia (November 2006)

Barbara Wilson travels to Australia to give a talk to the College of Clinical Neuropsychology in Melbourne, and to give the opening talk at a cognitive neuroscience and rehabilitation meeting on the Gold Coast, Queensland, in December.

Bob Carlyon gives Distinguished Lecture at the University of Maryland (November 2006)

Bob Carlyon gives the University of Maryland, Distinguished Lecture. This is one of two such lectures presented every year, and his title was "Listening in a cocktail party with acoustic and electric hearing".

Tom Manly awarded the British Neurological Society Elizabeth Warrington Prize

Tom Manly is awarded the British Neurological Society Elizabeth Warrington Prize, given in recognition of the achievements of a Neuropsychologist at an early stage in one's career.

Olaf Hauk wins prize for exceptional advances in EEG/MEG research

Olaf Hauk wins Second Prize in the Advanced Neurotechnology Young Scientist Award. This is given for exceptional advances in EEG/MEG research and is designed to foster, encourage and recognize outstanding achievements in, and contributions to cognitive neuroscience.

Patient in vegetative state plays tennis in her head

Adrian Owen's research on Vegetative State gains major media coverage.

A team in Cambridge has discovered that a patient in a vegetative state can communicate through her thoughts. Researchers at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and in Academic Neurosurgery in Cambridge, in collaboration with colleagues in Liege have for the first time discovered a way to show preserved conscious awareness in a patient who has been diagnosed as vegetative. The research is published today in Science.

A year ago, the woman, who is 23, sustained a severe traumatic brain injury in a road traffic accident. She is physically unresponsive and fulfils all the criteria for a diagnosis of vegetative state according to international guidelines.

Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, Cambridge, her brain activity was mapped while the patient was asked to imagine playing tennis or moving around her home. The scientists found she was able to do this, activating different areas of her brain in the same way as healthy volunteers.

"These are startling results. They confirm that, despite the diagnosis of vegetative state, this patient retained the ability to understand spoken commands and to respond to them through her brain activity, rather than through speech or movement. Her decision to work with us by imagining particular tasks when asked represents a clear act of intent which confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings," said Dr Adrian Owen who led the research.

The scientists first used fMRI to measure the patient's neural responses during the presentation of spoken sentences (e.g. "there was milk and sugar in his coffee"). These tests showed she recognised speech. Furthermore, more complex sentences that contained ambiguous words (e.g. "the creak came from a beam in the ceiling") produced an additional significant response. This indicated that the brain understood the meaning of the sentences.

Although, an appropriate neural response to the meaning of spoken sentences suggests someone is consciously aware, it does not confirm that they are. So to work out whether or not the patient was able to understand and respond, she was asked to imagine certain activities like playing tennis or walking around her home. The brain activity of the patient was indistinguishable from that of healthy volunteers.

"These are very exciting findings. This technique may allow us to identify which patients have some level of awareness" Dr Owen said. "But it is important to emphasise that if we don't see responses in a patient it does not necessarily mean that they are not aware. Future work will investigate whether the technique can be used more widely in these patients and whether this discovery could lead to a way of communicating with some patients who may be aware, but unable to move or speak."

See:

"Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State", published in Science (8 Sept 2006)

Adrian Owen's Research and publications (including links to News coverage)

CBU recruiting drive for MRI Volunteers

The CBU recruiting drive for MRI Volunteers at Cambridge Freshers Fairs during Michaelmas Term was very successful. Are you interested in helping us with our research? Research at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit is dependent on the good will of members of the public who volunteer to take part in our studies of attention, emotion, memory and language. If you think you might like to help us, click this link: Volunteer Panel

John Duncan appointed to Honorary Professorship in Cognitive Neuroscience

The University of Cambridge has appointed John Duncan to an Honorary Professorship in Cognitive Neuroscience in recognition of his contribution to research into psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Cambridge.

Wellcome Trust Project Grant to study pitch perception by cochlear implant users

Bob Carlyon has been successful in obtaining a Wellcome Trust Project Grant to study pitch perception by cochlear implant users. Cochlear Implants (CIs) restore hearing to deaf people by stimulating the auditory nerve ("AN") electrically. Many patients understand speech well in quiet, but, unfortunately, not when competing sounds - such as another talker - are present. A major reason for this is that CIs are very poor at encoding pitch differences between speakers, which is an important cue that NH listeners use to selectively listen to one voice.

"We will investigate whether the poor pitch perception by CI users is due to the temporal pattern of activity that their CI elicits in the auditory nerve (AN), and whether it is possible to improve pitch perception. One set of experiments changes the pattern of electrical stimulation in ways that should improve coding of pitch in the AN, and then examines whether this in fact improves pitch perception. We also investigate whether pitch perception can be improved by concurrently stimulating several electrodes. Finally, we test a new group of patients, who, unusually, have a CI in one ear and NH in the other. This allows us directly to compare NH and CI pitch perception in the same person, and will help us more accurately mimic pitch experienced by NH users in a CI".

PhD student Fellowship at Peterhouse

Morgan Barense, one of our MRC-funded PhD students obtains a Fellowship at Peterhouse College. The Fellowship will provide her with funding for three years, during which she will undertake research into the organisation of memory in the human brain, using neuroimaging and neuropsychological techniques.

PhD student awarded the Philip Rennick award

Jessica Fish, a MRC-funded PhD student, is awarded the Philip Rennick award for the best submission by a graduate student at the International Neuropsychological Society meeting in Zurich, June 2006. See:

• Fish, J., Manly, T. and Wilson, B.A. (2006). Modulation of executive functioning in acquired brain injury. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 12 (S2).

Abstract:

A principal aim in the assessment of executive functioning is the prediction of problems in everyday life. The assumption that tests predict everyday performance is by no means unequivocally supported by research findings (Burgess et al, 1998), though the development of ecologically valid tests is helping to improve the situation. Most assessment procedures share one major drawback: they tell us very little about variability in performance. We have used methods that attempt to gauge this variability, with reference to prospective memory rehabilitation. We used a naturalistic task, in which patients are asked to make four daily telephone calls to a voicemail service, and found significant facilitation of performance when a text message based alerting strategy was used. A second study investigated how different aspects of executive functioning are influenced by motivational salience, employing traditional experimental research methodology. We would argue that measuring variability in, rather than absolute level of, performance, provides a better reflection of everyday function than standard "snapshot" assessment procedures, as well as providing theoretical insight into the cognitive processes involved in these complex behaviours, and clinical insight regarding the implementation of rehabilitation strategies.

Part of the research presented at the conference is shortly to be published in Neuropsychologia. The article is here .

Barbara Wilson wins Univeristy of Texas Robert Moody award

Barbara Wilson wins the Univeristy of Texas Robert Moody award for distinguished services to rehabilitation, the first non-American to received the award. Barbara is the current president of the International Neuropsychological Society and gave the presidential address in Zurich in July. She will give one more address in Portland Oregon in February before she relinquishes the Presidency.

British Neuropsychological Society honours Barbara Wilson

On the 23rd March, 2006 The British Neuropsychological Society held a festschrift to honour the contribution of Barbara Wilson to neuropsychology and particularly neuropsychological rehabilitation. The symposium, chaired by Narinder Kapur, featured talks from Myrna Schwartz, Elizabeth Glisky, Alan Baddeley, Ian Robertson, Jon Evans and Linda Clare.