Information about departments

UCL reports with great sadness the death on 28 November of Jon Driver, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, and one of the world’s leading psychologists and neuroscientists.

Professor Sir John Tooke, Vice-Provost (Health) at UCL, has today begun a five year term as President of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He takes over from Professor Sir John Bell who retired yesterday having led the Academy to significantly increased prominence and influence.

The UCL Institute of Ophthalmology is the recipient of a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, in recognition of “outstanding excellence”, it was announced today.

Dr Harry Griffin (UCL Interaction Centre) sheds light on our ability to identify members of a family from facial structures. Read: Times of India

Source: Alzheimer’s Research UK Press Release

UCL Institute of Neurology PhD student, Hannah Golden, is embarking on a project to understand the causes of hearing problems in Alzheimer’s disease, thanks to an £88,000 grant from Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s leading dementia research charity. It’s hoped the study, which is the one of the first of its kind, could improve diagnosis and lead to new ways of helping patients cope with their symptoms.

A study published in Neuron last week, conducted at UCL's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, shows that the conventional view of how our brains learn has to be revisited. Previously, it was thought that the dopaminergic inputs that the ventral striatum receives from mid-brain structures signal a reward prediction error which facilitates learning from rewards. However, the study conducted by Miriam Klein-Flugge, Tim Behrens and colleagues, found that in situations where learning does not depend on rewards, the ventral striatal signal flexibly adapts and instead reflects a behaviourally relevant teaching signal, while the mid-brain still encodes the classic reward prediction error. Read: Wellcome Trust Blog

A unique scientific research space, headed by Dr Beau Lotto (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), has now officially opened at the Science Museum in London.

Congratulations to Professor Trevor Smart, Schild Professor of Pharmacology and Head of the Research Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology, who has been appointed the Chair of the Neuroscience Domain.

Professor Sophie Scott (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) examines some myths about the brain, including the common misconception that we only use 10% of our brain's capacity. Read: BBC News Online

Now, as the health sciences finally enter a golden age of genetics, the relevancy of the Galton Chair has never been greater. This was the message of Professor Nicholas Wood’s inaugural lecture, which he delivered to a packed auditorium of colleagues, friends and family at UCL on 19 October.  Read more on the UCL Events blog...