UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences

The past year at UCL has seen a landmark larynx transplant, a lecture from Noam Chomsky, simulated missions to Mars and a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, among many other groundbreaking developments. UCL Communications has created the digital review of the year below: click on the images to discover more.

A new centre dedicated to the understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases will be established at UCL following the award of a £20million grant from the Wolfson Foundation, it was announced today.

The 2011 UCL Research Strategy calls for a transformation of the understanding of the role of our comprehensive research-intensive university in the 21st century.

Professor Eleanor Maguire (UCL Imaging Neuroscience) comments on how taxi drivers’ brains rewire while learning their way around London. Read: BBC News More: Nature Telegraph Times (£) Daily Mail Mirror

Professor Uta Frith (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) talks about her pioneering work on autism and dyslexia. Listen: BBC Radio 4 The Life Scientific

A detailed look at the availability of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST), a course of activity sessions for dementia sufferers developed by Dr Aimee Spector (UCL Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology). Read: Daily Mail

Children exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat, new research has shown.

Source: The Lancet/The Lancet Neurology Press Release

TRACK-HD investigators, including UCL Institute of Neurology researchers have identified a set of objective, validated measures that can be used to assess new treatments for Huntington’s disease (HD). The study, published last week in The Lancet Neurology, should increase the likelihood of success of future trials of new drugs to delay the onset and reduce the severity of HD.

UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience's Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore gave a talk on the teenage brain at the BBC Free Thinking Festival, broadcast on Radio 3 on 23 November 2011. Listen here

Congratulations to UCL’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging Research Fellow, Klaus Wunderlich, who has won the Lloyd’s “Science of Risk” Prize in the category of Behavioural Risk. His paper was also voted “Best Overall Paper”.