MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences UnitThe CBU is one of the eight UK sites to offer whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG), and CBU MEG scientists Richard Henson and Yury Shtyrov are part of a nationwide collaborative initiative (led by Professor Krish Singh at Cardiff University) that has recently been awarded £1.3M by the MRC and EPSRC, in order to bring together clinical […]
New MRC funding scheme rewards Early Career Scientists at CBU
Four CBU scientists will receive additional funding under a new scheme launched to mark the upcoming MRC Centenary in 2013. Richard Meiser-Stedman, an MRC funded Clinician Scientist Fellow based at the Unit, will use his award to further his work on understanding the nature of PTSD and developing early stage treatments; Michael Ewbank, a CBU […]
Mind Changers – Donald Broadbent remembered
A recent BBC Radio 4 programme explored the legacy of psychologist Donald Broadbent, who was Director of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit from 1958-1974. Broadbent propagated his belief that psychology should be applied to practical problems, such as optimising human performance by the design of aircraft cockpits or nuclear reactor control rooms. He […]
John Duncan appearance at Café Scientifique evening
Professor John Duncan recently appeared at a Café Scientique evening of informal science, a series hosted by the “Naked Scientists” of the University of Cambridge and sponsored by the MRC. In his lecture and Q&A session John explored human intelligence and the neurons and circuits in the brain that enable us to have the thoughts, […]
CBU share in £1.7m grant award
Drs. Mark Buckley (University of Oxford), Andrew Bell (CBU, seen left), and Natasha Sigala (Sussex University, Visiting Scientist of the CBU) have been awarded a £1.7M MRC project grant to examine neural activity and interactions within a network of cortical regions responsible for mediating choice behaviour. A key region in this network is frontopolar cortex […]
Have we met before?
We often recognise that a person is familiar before we recollect how we know them. In a recent publication in Nature Neuroscience, CBU scientists Bernhard Staresina, Rik Henson and colleagues in Bonn, Germany, combined functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy volunteers with intrancranial electroencephalographic recordings from patients to reveal the time-courses of familiarity and recollection […]
Festival appearance for Tom Manly
The CBU’s Tom Manly took to the stage at the Secret Garden Party festival this weekend alongside acts such as Orbital, Tim Minchin, Utah Saints, Robin Ince and ‘Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly’. The four-day sold-out summer festival that last year saw 26,000 attendees is held near Cambridge each year, and Tom was taking part […]
Failing to forget? Or too much to remember?
Can some types of amnesia arise, ironically, from remembering too much? And can this excessive memory impair our ability to perceive things? In a paper in Neuron, a team led by Morgan Barense (formerly at CBU, now at University of Toronto), Rik Henson (CBU, seen left), Lisa Saksida and Tim Bussey (University of Cambridge) and colleagues […]
