4th November 2013
Concussion is a frequent occurrence for rugby players with 5.1 instances for every 1000 hours of rugby played. These collisions have a severe impact, with the force being compared to the experience of a car crash. Research has begun to establish a correlation between degenerative brain disease and players of contact sports, including rugby players. More…
24th October 2013
The gap between symptoms and pathology in many brain disorders has been explained by ‘cognitive reserve’. This is the finding that a group of variables that include education levels, intellectual ability, social activity and stimulating environments, enables the brain to adapt to injury or disease. Until recently there has been limited understanding as to how More…
14th October 2013
We only use 10% of our brains, people can be defined as ‘left brained’ or ‘right brained’, listening to Mozart will increase children’s IQ. These are some of the many myths about our minds. BBC Radio 4 discusses them with a team of neuroscientists to find out about the science behind these myths. Mind Myths More…
3rd October 2013
The BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Inside Health’ talks to Professor Ray Chaudhuri about early treatment for Parkinson ’s disease. Typically the early signs of Parkinson’s were considered to be motor symptoms such as stiffness, slowness and tremor. Recently however, our understanding has identified pre-motor symptoms including changes to sleep and a loss of smell which More…
24th September 2013
Research has predominately focussed on peoples’ ability to recognise negative emotions in visual stimuli. Professor Sophie Scott is augmenting this by exploring humans auditory processing of emotions and focusing on the functions of the everyday behaviour of laughter. On the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘The Life Scientific’, Jim Al-Khalili talks to neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott More…
19th September 2013
More than a third of clinical trials fail to recruit the necessary number of participants. As a consequence, weaker conclusions are drawn and a need to repeat research is established thus amplifying the required resources. Til Wykes, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, highlights the need More…
6th September 2013
Proffesor Tim Kendall, Consultant Psychiatrist comments on the increasing use of Ritalin as a “worrying trend” that reflects the increased diagnosis of, and prescribing for the treatment of ADHD. Prof Tim Kendall acknowledges the difficulty of treating a child with ADHD without using Ritalin whilst however raising concerns over the consequences of taking these drugs More…
29th August 2013
Researchers have successfully trialled a technique to prevent PTSD in people who witness a traumatic event. The participants were trained to think about a traumatic event in a specific way; either focusing on ‘why’ it happened or on ‘how’ it happened. After being deliberately traumatised by watching a video of a car accident, it became More…
7th August 2013
Following on from the controversy that surrounds the publication of the DSM-V, Will Self provides us with his account of the psychiatric profession; questioning the legitimacy of their evidence base and their over-diagnosing and over-prescribing ethos. Self argues these issues are exacerbated in a society with weakened social support and a reliance on diagnosis to More…
24th April 2013
Each year, around 6 million healthcare appointments are wasted by patients who Do Not Attend (DNA) their appointments and fail to cancel in enough time. This is a major drain on the NHS and costs an estimated £700 – £800 million a year. DNAs have been reported by 84% of General Practitioners as a problem, More…