UCL MEDIA RELATIONS

Duncan Wisbey, impressionist and voice artist on Alistair McGowan's Big Impression, and Professor Sophie Scott, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCL (University College London), will explore the human voice from the perspective of the brain in a talk given during Brain Awareness Week. The duo will discuss how our voices are perceived and produced, and how artists can change their voice to make themselves sound older, or taller, or like someone else altogether. The talk will be held at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on Tuesday 11 March 2008 at one pm.

A proportion of people suffering from schizophrenia have loss or duplication of regions of their chromosomes that significantly increase risk of the disease, according to new findings from a large multinational research group published today in Nature.

Teenagers have difficulty incorporating other people’s points of view, according to a new study published in the journal Developmental Science. The findings imply that our brains continue to evolve ‘theory of mind’ until our late teens or earlier twenties, says UCL (University College London) researcher Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. The research is being presented at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition which opens today (30 June 2009), where members of the public can try out the experiment for themselves.

Neuroscientists at UCL (University College London) and Ghent University have found the brain circuit involved in thinking twice and checking impulsive behaviour. The duo discovered that an area in the fronto-median cortex of the brain is activated when you begin to think ‘I’m not going to go through with this’ and stop yourself doing what you were about to do.

UCL has created two new Pro-Provost positions – one for North America and one for South Asia and the Middle East - to maintain and develop the university's interests in these regions. Pro-Provost for North America, Professor Janette Atkinson , and Pro-Provost for South Asia and the Middle East, Professor Vince Emery, will take up post this month.

The first known case of someone born without the ability to recognise voices has been reported in a paper by UCL (University College London) researchers, in a study of a rare condition known as phonagnosia. The UCL team are calling for other people to come forward if they think they have also grown up with the condition.

UCL (University College London) researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain.

Exposure to new experiences improves memory, according to research by UCL psychologists and medical doctors that could hold major implications for the treatment of memory problems. The study, published in ‘Neuron’ on 3 August, concludes that introducing completely new facts when learning, significantly improves memory performance.

In a significant development for European higher education and research, University College London (UCL) today signed a research alliance agreement with Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), with the ambition of creating a tri-polar centre of world excellence in the cognitive and neurosciences.

In a unique public experiment, scientists from UCL working with the New London Orchestra will test Camden schoolchildren to find out how musicians learn a piece of music. There will also be talks and hands-on demonstrations held as part of global 'Brain Awareness Week'. Members of the public and media are welcome to watch or participate - no booking necessary. The free event will take place on 20th March 2004 , 12:30-5:30pm , at Camden School for Girls, Sandall Road , NW5. Musical children should pre-register by calling in advance Cassie Tait on 020 7823 5523. www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/music

The last novel written by author Iris Murdoch before she died reveals signs of the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the latest online issue of Brain.

By morphing the faces of state figures such as Margaret Thatcher into those of famous actors like Marilyn Monroe, University College London (UCL) scientists have discovered how our brains process and identify people from their faces.

Scientists can now predict memory of an event before it even happens. A team at UCL (University College London) can now tell how well memory will serve us before we have seen what we will remember.

By morphing the faces of state figures such as Margaret Thatcher into those of famous actors like Marilyn Monroe, University College London (UCL) scientists have discovered how our brains process and identify people from their faces.

When a subject lifts a heavy box, and sees someone else lifting an object, the subject thinks the other person's box is lighter than it really is. It seems therefore that performing an action influences our perception of an observed action. This is the central finding of a paper published in today's edition of the journal 'Current Biology' from a research team led by Dr Antonia Hamilton of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL).

Fast language learners have more white matter and a less symmetrical brain than slower language learners, according to UCL (University College London) research published today in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

Media stories relating to UCL for 9 April 2006

The miracle worker - 9 April

In a study published in the latest issue of Current Biology, University College London (UCL) scientists have shown that the human brain holds and continuously updates an internal map of the body. The UCL team hope their findings will help explain how the processes in the brain which create a coherent body map may go wrong in people with neurological or psychiatric disorders.

The neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations has been found by scientists at UCL (University College London). In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in NeuroImage this week.

Hypnosis can induce synaesthetic experiences – where one sense triggers the involuntary use of another – according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. The findings suggests that people with synaesthesia, contrary to popular belief, do not necessarily have extra connections in their brain; rather, their brains may simply do more ‘cross talking’ and this can be induced by changing inhibitory processes in the average brain.

Patients with schizophrenia are able to correctly see through an illusion known as the ‘hollow mask’ illusion, probably because their brain disconnects ‘what the eyes see’ from what ‘the brain thinks it is seeing’, according to a joint UK and German study published in the journal NeuroImage. The findings shed light on why cannabis users may also be less deceived by the illusion whilst on the drug.

Professor John O’Keefe, UCL Cell & Developmental Biology, has won the 2008 Neuroscience Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation for “his pioneering work concerning the neural basis of complex cognitive functions in freely moving animals.”

Two University College London (UCL) professors, John Collinge and Uta Frith, are among the new Fellows of the Royal Society announced today.

University College London (UCL) is fielding a host of top researchers at the BA Festival of Science at the University of Salford. Academics from across the university will be presenting the latest developments in their field.

There is a specific mechanism in our brains that deals only with recognising peoples’ faces and it is separate from the mechanism that allows us to recognise objects like houses, cars, horses or even people’s bodies, according to a study led by Dr Brad Duchaine at UCL (University College London). He shows how we recognise faces by analysing one man, who can’t tell one face from another, in a paper that will appear online in Cognitive Neuropsychology journal on 13^th February 2006.

Scientists led by UCL (University College London) have induced dyscalculia in subjects without the maths learning difficulty for the first time. The study, which finds that the right parietal lobe is responsible for dyscalculia, potentially has implications for diagnosis and management through remedial teaching.

An academic husband and wife at UCL (Unversity College London) have found themselves in the unique position of being both Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS) and Fellows of the British Academy (FBA), an exceptional accomplishment in the history of UCL for an academic couple.

Scientists at UCL (University College London) have discovered the area of the brain linked to dyscalculia, a maths learning disability. The finding shows that there is a separate function in the brain used for counting that is essential for diagnosis and an understanding of why many people struggle with maths.

The underlying sense of being in control of our own actions is challenged by new research from UCL (University College London) which demonstrates that the choices we make internally are weak and easily overridden compared to when we are told which choice to make.

Are you hip to your hippocampus? Is your somatosensory cortex seeking stimulation? UCL (University College London) has a square full of scientists to tickle your thalamus during Brain Awareness Week, along with a website to test your music listening ability.

Are you hip to your hippocampus? Is your somatosensory cortex seeking stimulation? UCL (University College London) has a square full of scientists to tickle your thalamus during Brain Awareness Week, along with a website to test your music listening ability.

University College London (UCL) scientists have made the first steps towards building a mind-reading device. In a study published in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience, the UCL team discovered that they could use brief recordings of brain activity alone to predict which of two objects volunteers were viewing.

New research led by scientists at UCL’s Institute of Neurology and Cardiff University has found that the brain’s so-called ‘supplementary motor regions’, located in the medial frontal cortex, play a key role in suppressing unconsciously-triggered actions which occur when we encounter familiar objects and situations.

Scientists have discovered that a system in our brain which responds to actions we are watching, such as a dancer's delicate pirouette or a masterful martial arts move, reacts differently if we are also skilled at doing the move. The University College London (UCL) study, published in the latest online edition of Cerebral Cortex , may help in the rehabilitation of people whose motor skills are damaged by stroke, and suggests that athletes and dancers could continue to mentally train while they are physically injured.

Scientists have discovered that a system in our brain which responds to actions we are watching, such as a dancer's delicate pirouette or a masterful martial arts move, reacts differently if we are also skilled at doing the move. The University College London (UCL) study, published in the latest online edition of Cerebral Cortex , may help in the rehabilitation of people whose motor skills are damaged by stroke, and suggests that athletes and dancers could continue to mentally train while they are physically injured.

Autistic children have a capacity to understand other people through stereotypes, say scientists at UCL (University College London). The research shows that autistic children are just as able as others to predict people’s behaviour when stereotypes, such as gender and race, are the only available guide.

UCL (University College London) scientists have found the reason why individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome spend less time paying attention to others – weaker connections between brain areas mean that they benefit less from doing so.

Teenagers take less account than adults of people’s feelings and, often, even fail to think about their own, according to a UCL neuroscientist. The results, presented at the BA Festival of Science today, show that teenagers hardly use the area of the brain that is involved in thinking about other people’s emotions and thoughts, when considering a course of action.

Knowing the words for numbers is not necessary to be able to count, according to a new study of aboriginal children by UCL (University College London) and the University of Melbourne. The study of the aboriginal children – from two communities which do not have words or gestures for numbers – found that they were able to copy and perform number-related tasks. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that we possess an innate mechanism for counting, which may develop differently in children with dyscalculia.

Intelligent design, terrorism, pain perception in low birth weight babies, Bram Stoker’s Transylvania and how to predict the future locations of crime are just a few of the topics to be covered in this term’s Lunch Hour Lecture series at UCL.

Intelligent design, terrorism, pain perception in low birth weight babies, Bram Stoker’s Transylvania and how to predict the future locations of crime are just a few of the topics to be covered in this term’s Lunch Hour Lecture series at UCL.

The country’s first mind gym opened yesterday as experts hailed the benefits of keeping the brain agile.

Scientists say a mental workout is as important as keeping the body trim in the fight to stay young. …

A neuroscientist would tell you that the poor decisions and risky behaviour of adolescents are not just the result of raging hormones or a double shot of attitude. Instead, they are at least partially a result of differences in brain anatomy between teens and adults. …

Teenagers are sulky and inconsiderate only because their brains are going through a period of rapid change, researchers said yesterday. …

Scientists at UCL have discovered the neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations. In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in ‘NeuroImage’.

A condition that causes an inability to recognize faces is socially isolating – and surprisingly common.

Cecilia Burman has always had a problem with faces. As a child, she struggled to pick out her own face in school photos, and she is hard-pressed today to describe her mother’s features. Over the years she has offended countless friends, passing them on neighborhood streets or in office hallways like strangers. …

New findings from researchers at Harvard and elsewhere suggest that a surprising number of people are face-blind, so bad at recognizing faces that they routinely snub acquaintances and have trouble following movie plots. In extreme cases, they may greet siblings as strangers and struggle to discern which child is theirs at school pick-up time.

U.S. and British researchers say they’ve discovered prosopagnosia -- or “face blindness” -- is not as rare as has been believed.

Mary King’s claims that genuine tone deafness is encounterd only in people with brain damage can hardly have been music to Emily Bearn’s ears (Lost in La La Lan, May 13).

The notion that young children can learn productively by watching television is widely dismissed by scientists who study the developing brain.

We’ve all failed to recognise someone we know or forgotten a person’s name, but for people with prosopagnosia – or ‘face blindness’ – this happens with everyone they meet. John (not real name), 30, is a graphic designer who was diagnosed with face blindness two months ago. Here’s his story.“I first became aware that I was prosopagnosic about two months ago, but I’ve always struggled with faces and have had to develop a web of support mechanisms to help me get round it.

From blanking colleagues and acquaintances, Andrew Billen knew that his face-blindness was bad — then tests revealed just how bad. …

The difference between real and illusory touch is revealed today in the journal ‘PLoS Biology’ by Dr Felix Blankenburg [UCL Institute of Neurology], Professor Jon Driver [UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience] and their colleagues.

If you have experienced the horror of someone at a party greeting you as an old friend when you have no idea who they are, imagine how it must feel to have that inability to recognise people day after day throughout your life.

• Links:
• Register
  
• UCL Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing
  

• Press Release
• 
  
• Links:
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• PNAS

PhD student Irma T. Kurniawan discusses the surprising motivations for sporting performance in the latest issue of Opticon1826.

• Links:
• Professor Driver
• UCL Neuroscience
• Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Royal Society

• Links:
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Emotion
• Wellcome Trust
• Ofcom

• Links:
• Crucible
• Cafe Scientifique

Staff are advised that the ‘town meeting’ on developmental cognitive neuroscience on 9 June 2009 will now be held at the Kennedy Lecture Theatre in the UCL Institute of Child Health due to the high number of participants.

• Links:
  Dr Jonathan Roiser
  UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
  

• Links:
  
• UCL press release
  
• Research paper (subscription required)
  

• Links:
• UCL on iTunes U
• Listen now (mp3 format)
• RSS feed

• Links:
• UCL on iTunes U
• RSS feed (mp3 format)

• Links:
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• UCL IoN dyscalculia study
  
• PNAS
• University of Melbourne
• 
  

• Links:
• PEOPLE
• Dr Sam Gilbert
• Dr Jenny Crinion
• Dr Sven Bestmann
• AWARDS
• Royal Society Fellowships
• BBSRC David Phillips Fellowships
• MRC Clinical Scientist Fellowship

• Links:
• Professor Hugh Gurling
• UCL Mental Health Sciences
• ‘Nature’
  

• Links:
• National Portrait Gallery
• Professor Uta Frith - 'Woman of outstanding achievement'
• New Fellows of the British Academy elected
• UCL ICN
• UCL iTunes U podcasts

• Links:
• Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Index of British Academy Fellows, 2008
• UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging

Five of the 38 Fellows of the British Academy elected on 17 July 2008 are from the UCL community.

Professor Jon Driver (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience), Professor Chris Frith (UCL Institute of Neurology), Professor Ruth Mace (UCL Anthropology), Professor Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology) and Professor Vivian Nutton (Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL).

• Links:
• UCL Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Links:
• The Space and Memory Group
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

• Links:
• Professor Jon Driver
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Links:
• UCL Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Centre for Neuroimaging Techniques
• Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• 
  

• ‘The Times’
  

Why do some people hold on to their accents all their lives while others drop them overnight? Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist from UCL, has spent 16 years researching speech: how we formulate words, how we come by our accents and how we decode what is being said to us.

• ‘The Times’ 

Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, 33, a Royal Society research fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and co-author (with Uta Frith) of The Learning Brain, explains the mysterious processes that cause sulking and lie-ins.

• Links:
• Professor Sophie Scott
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Bloomsbury theatre
  

• Jerome Burne, ‘Daily Mail’
  

Deep brain stimulation sounds like a form of fiendish torture. …

• Links:
• UCL on iTunes U
• RSS feed (mp3 format)

• Link: Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh

• Links:
• Rosalind Franklin Prize Lecture
• Webcast
• UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimagining
  
• Professor Eleanor A Maguire
  

• Link: UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
  

• Links:
• MTHR
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Audiological Medicine Unit

People have always been fascinated by the workings of the mind. Now a book in the Rough Guides series offers an insight. …

New research led by scientists at the UCL Institute of Neurology and Cardiff University has found that the brain’s so-called ‘supplementary motor regions’, located in the medial frontal cortex, play a key role in suppressing unconsciously-triggered actions which occur when we encounter familiar objects and situations.

Quiet environments provide a good setting for the human brain when it needs to interpret speech. But noisy environments, say researchers at UCL and Imperial College London, prove taxing on the brain because the speech it must make sense of seems incomprehensible. In their latest study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, researchers aimed to simulate the everyday experience of people who need cochlear implants and to assess how these experiences with the devices can be improved. …

Whenever some people see a series of mathematical sums, they experience the stifling condition of ‘number blindness.’

Scientists from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience have shown that the human brain holds and continuously updates an internal map of the body.

Different brain areas are activated when we choose for ourselves to suppress an emotion, compared to situations where we are instructed to inhibit an emotion, according a new study from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Ghent University.

An international team led by researchers at the UCL Institute of Neurology has identified a set of tests that could help identify whether - and how - Huntington’s disease (HD) is progressing in groups of people who are not yet showing symptoms.

Up to 10 per cent of the population are affected by specific learning disabilities (SLDs), such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and autism, translating to 2 or 3 pupils in every classroom according to a new study.

Healthy young people (aged 5-16 years) are wanted to take part in a UCL research project: Neuroimaging investigations of language to aid paediatric neurosurgical decision-making.

Funding totalling £12.9 million has been awarded to researchers at UCL by the European Research Council (ERC) under the Advanced Grants programme, which supports research leaders to develop ground-breaking projects and support pioneering research with far-reaching impact.

The Human Brain Project has been officially selected as one of the European Commission’s two FET Flagship projects. The new project will unite European efforts to address one of the greatest challenges of modern science: understanding the human brain.

Scientists have revealed the minutely detailed pain map of the hand that is contained within our brains, shedding light on how the brain makes us feel discomfort and potentially increasing our understanding of the processes involved in chronic pain. 

A new study in the journal Neuron reveals how the brain stores information about who’s who in the social pecking order.

Researchers from UCL have found that lonely people have less grey matter in a part of the brain associated with decoding eye gaze and other social cues.

Dr André Strydom (UCL Mental Health Sciences Unit) and Professors Elizabeth Fisher and John Hardy (both UCL Institute of Neurology) have been successful in their application to the Wellcome Trust for a Strategic Award to understand the processes involved in the Alzheimer’s Disease that often occurs as people with Down Syndrome age.

Trying to keep an image we’ve just seen in memory can leave us blind to things we are ‘looking’ at, according to the results of a study by researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Professional ball game players report the sensation of the ball ‘slowing-down’ just before they hit it. Confirming these anecdotal comments, a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that time is perceived to slow down during the period of action preparation, as the result of an increased intake of visual information.

Researchers at UCL have been awarded a total of 17 Starting Grants by the European Research Council (ERC), the highest number awarded at UCL under a single funding call to date. These grants have a total value of €21.6 million. 

Brain scans have revealed distinctive features in the brain structure of karate experts, which could be linked to their ability to punch powerfully from close range.

Five UCL researchers have been awarded Future Leaders awards by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC).      

When we focus intently on one task, we often fail to see other things in plain sight - a phenomenon known as ‘inattention blindness’. Scientists already know that performing a task involving high information load - a ‘high load’ task - reduces our visual cortex response to incoming stimuli. Now researchers from UCL have examined the brain mechanisms behind this, further explaining why our brain becomes ‘blind’ under high load.

Congratulations to the members of the UCL community who were recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2012.

The UCL News podcast gives you the opportunity to listen to the latest news and research from around UCL every fortnight. Split up into three parts, you can either listen to the podcast all in one go, or save features for later listening. 

Five medical researchers from UCL have been recognised for excellence in medical science by election to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

UCL scientists were involved in an event that celebrated leading women in science from across the world, held on International Women´s Day (8 March) at the Science Museum's Dana Centre.

When faced with making a complicated decision, our automatic instinct to avoid misfortune can result in missing out on rewards, and could even contribute to depression, according to new research.

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.

Scientists have found a direct link between the number of ‘Facebook friends’ a person has and the size of particular brain regions.

Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory, according to new research.

Specialised teaching for individuals with dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, should be made widely available in mainstream education, according to a review of current research published in the journal Science.

• Links
• UCL Neuroscience
• The Dana Foundation (Brain Awareness Week organisers)

• Links
• Suffrage Science
• Coverage in the Guardian

• Links
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Professor Patrick Haggard
• Research paper in Psychological Science
• Coverage on the BBC
• Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

• Links:
• Wellcome Trust
• Professor Geraint Rees
• BBC Radio 4 - Today Programme

• Press release
• Links:
  Journal of Neuroscience
  MRC
  Wellcome Trust
  Professor Masud Husain
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Neuroscience
• BBC News Online Coverage

• Links:
• Research in Nature Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• The Wellcome Trust
  
• Coverage in the Scotsman
• Scientific American podcast
• 
  

• Links
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• Professor Sarah Tabrizi

• Links:
• Professor Patrick Haggard
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Original research in Current Biology
• Article on BBC News online

• Press release

• Links:
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Wellcome Trust Centre for the Neuroimaging at UCL
• Science

• Links: 
• UCL Institute of Opthalmology
• Dr Marko Nardini

• Links:
• UCL Cancer Institute
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research
• The Royal Society
• The Wolfson Foundation
• UCL Awards and Appointments

• Links:
• Bright Club
• UCL Public Engagement
• Bright Club at the Bloomsbury
• Bright Club podcasts

• Links:
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• UCL Epidemiology and Public Health

• Press release
• 
  
• Links:
• Current Biology paper and video abstract
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Professor Patrick Haggard

• Press release
• 
  
• Links:
• Neuropsychopharmacology
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Links: 

• 2010 Admission of New Fellows brochure (pdf)

• Press release
• 
  
• Links:
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Coverage in The Guardian

• Links
• Coverage in the Guardian
• Coverage in the Daily Telegraph
• Journal of Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Neuroscience

• Link:
• UCL Neuroscience

• Links:
• Academy of Medical Sciences
• UCL Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• UCL Ear Institute
• UCL Institute of Child Health
• Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Division of Population Health

• Links:
• Kinematics Lab at Development Cognitive Neuroscience Unit
• UCL Institute of Child Health
• UCL Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology
• Bobath Centre

• Links:
• Professor Uta Frith
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Autism and Talent
• Autism Awareness
• UCL on YouTube
  

• Link
• The Leverhulme Trust

• Press release
• 
  
• Links
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Dr Stephanie Burnett
• Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

UCL Union is running a series of events under the banner ‘Where’s Your Head At’ 15–19 March to promote mental health.

• Links:
• Watch Professor Sophie Scott on UCL’s YouTube channel
• Brain Awareness Week
• UCL Lunch Hour Lectures - The Social Brain
• UCL Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

• Press Release
• 
  
• Links:
  

• Links:
• Professor Sophie Scott
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Research study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

• Press release

‘Grid cells’ that act like a spatial map in the brain have been identified for the first time in humans, according to new research by UCL scientists which may help to explain how we create internal maps of new environments.

• Links
• UCL Neuroscience
• Latsis Foundation
• European Science Foundation

• Press release
• 
  
• Links:
• Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
• Current Biology
• Dr Tali Sharot

• Links:
• Royal Society’s 2009 Summer Science Exhibition
• Blakemore Lab – Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Professor Steve Jones
• Mullard Space Science Laboratory

• Link:
• Gresham College

• Links:
• UCL Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• UCL Institute of Neurology
• UCL Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies

• Links:
• UCL press release
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Dr Jonathan Roiser

“Neuroscience is one of the key disciplines of our time, and UCL is today the strongest neuroscience university in Europe”: Professor Malcolm Grant, UCL President and Provost. Through our world-class research in the institutes of Neurology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Child Health and Ophthalmology and many other UCL groups across our faculties, the university makes a difference every day to improving understanding of the brain and neurological and mental health care in our local community and beyond.

The second instalment of the ‘Today’s Neuroscience, Tomorrow’s History’ podcast series, compiled by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, is now available for download.

UCL has received funding for ten new awards from the Medical Research Council (MRC), which aim to strengthen research training links between academia and industry and to meet the UK’s need for health research skills.

• Links:
• European Research and Development Office
• Professor Ian Robinson
• Professor Matteo Carandini
• Professor Rani Spiegler
• Professor Dimitri Kullmann
• Professor Phillipe Jehiel
• European Research Council

• Links:
• UCL IoN
• Journal of Experimental Medicine

• Links:
• Professor O’Keefe
• UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
• Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation

• Link: UCL Neuroscience

A team of UCL neuroscientists has been investigating what causes people to experience confabulation – false memories following brain damage. The reasons why patients experience confabulation has largely remained a mystery.

• Professor Frith
• UCL Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience

• Links:

• Semir Zeki
• UCL Department of Anatomy & Development Biology
• Times Online article

The current issue of ‘Science’ contains two articles about neuroscience research at UCL. Dr Henrik Ehrsson’s paper on out-of-body experience and Dr Dean Mobbs’s findings about the brain’s changing responses to approaching predators are just two of a clutch of recent achievements from across UCL’s several institutions and centres of clinical and research expertise.

Dr Mark Lythgoe, UCL Institute of Child Health, will be presenting a Radio 4 documentary looking at the neuroscience behind snap decisions.

UCL Fellowships and Honorary Fellowships were awarded on 20 June 2007 to nine individuals who have attained distinction in the arts, literature, science or public life, rendered exceptional service to UCL or had a close association to UCL.

Dr Daniel Glaser (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) and Professor Steve Jones (UCL Biology) will discuss whether we should simply think of ourselves as animals at a free Café Scientifique event on 24 May 2007 at BelowZero.

The event promises to be a fascinating public debate about the nature of mankind. Café Scientifique is a forum for debating science issues and a place where everyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology over a drink.

Through Professor Jones’s many broadcasts on radio and television, his lectures, popular science books and his regular science column in ‘The Daily Telegraph’, he promotes the public understanding of science in areas such as human evolution and variation, race, sex, inherited disease and genetic manipulation.

He will be joined by Associate Professor Klas Kullander from the Biomedical Centre in Uppsala, Sweden. Here, Professor Kullander heads the Unit for Developmental Genetics where he studies the function and development of the nervous system.

The event is facilitated by UCL’s Dr Daniel Glaser, who is also development manager in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust. Dr Glaser comes from a neuroscience background, was the first 'Scientist in Residence' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), has presented a television series for the BBC and co-chairs Café Scientifique at the Photographers' Gallery.

The debate runs from 6.30 to 8pm. It is a free event, held outside a traditional academic context and open to the public.

To find out more, use the link at the bottom of this article.

Lausanne, Switzerland, is a small city in the Vaudoise region of Switzerland, known to many only for its access to the beauty of Lake Geneva, and skiing opportunities in the Swiss Alps. But Dr Nikki Robertson (UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health) is also acquainted with its less recreational side, after spending six months in the city hospital’s busy neonatal unit.

An exhibition at the Science Museum, featuring the work of several UCL researchers, shows how medical technology could boost our brains, read our thoughts and give us mind control over machines.

UCL Museums and Collections are hosting a series of workshops exploring touch and object handling in the context of museums.

Teenagers who believe that they can tidy their bedroom in three minutes and finish their homework in another five might not be wilfully slapdash. New research from Suparna Choudhury (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and UCL Institute of Child Health) has found that our ability to imagine our actions accurately improves throughout adolescence and well into our twenties, with possible repercussions for the way we interact socially.

Professor Moira Yip, 叶梅娜, (UCL Phonetics and Linguistics) starts work as Pro-Provost (China, Hong Kong and Macao) this week. As such, she is responsible for helping deliver UCL’s international strategy and developing partnerships with the largest educational power in the world.

Seven honorary UCL doctorates were conferred at a graduation ceremony on 4 September 2006 at Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way. The recipients hailed from a variety of backgrounds in academia, the arts and industry.

UCL is well represented at this year’s BA Festival of Science, held in Norwich from 2–9 September.

Members of the university will be appearing at nine separate events throughout the week, speaking on subjects ranging from ‘Beautiful brains’ and ‘Secrets of our universe’ to ‘Engineering today helps you work, rest and play’ and ‘Is there an anti-cancer diet?’

Peripheral vision may be improved by stimulating certain parts of the brain with brief electromagnetic pulses, according to research published today in the journal ‘Current Biology’ by a team at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Research published in ‘Neuron’ today by psychologists at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience shows that introducing completely new facts when learning significantly improves memory performance.

In the July 2006 issue of ‘Nature Reviews Neuroscience’, Professor Geraint Rees (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) and Dr John-Dylan Haynes (Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences), review emerging approaches to reconstruct mental states in humans, or ‘brain reading’.

The neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations has been found by scientists at UCL. In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in ‘NeuroImage’.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed in June 2006 by UCL’s President and Provost, Professor Malcolm Grant, and Osaka’s Mayor, Junichi Seki, with respect to collaboration between UCL and Osaka City University (OCU).

Teenagers take less account than adults of people’s feelings and, often, even fail to think about their own, according to a UCL neuroscientist. The results, presented at the BA Festival of Science today, show that teenagers hardly use the area of the brain that is involved in thinking about other people’s emotions and thoughts, when considering a course of action.

Professor Faraneh Vargha-Khadem (UCL Institute of Child Health) is the 2006 winner of the prestigious Fondation Ipsen Neurospsychology Jean-Louis Signoret Prize for her outstanding contribution in the domain of Genetics of Behaviour.

Researchers at the UCL Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience celebrated its official launch on Wednesday, as well as its £3 million funding for a suite of laboratories.

Fast language learners have more white matter and a less symmetrical brain than slower language learners, according to UCL published today in the journal ‘Cerebral Cortex’.

Nine UCL doctoral students and post-docs were chosen to present posters on their research at the House of Commons on 13 March 2006 as part of the UK National Science Week.

Scientists can now predict memory of an event before it even happens. A team at UCL can now tell how well memory will serve us before we have seen what we will remember.

Scientists can now predict memory of an event before it even happens. A team at UCL (University College London) can now tell how well memory will serve us before we have seen what we will remember.

Experts from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Professor Uta Frith, have published a groundbreaking book that provides insight into how and when our brains learn throughout our lives.

University College London (UCL) scientists have made the first steps towards building a mind-reading device. In a study published in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience, the UCL team discovered that they could use brief recordings of brain activity alone to predict which of two objects volunteers were viewing.

Two University College London (UCL) professors, John Collinge and Uta Frith, are among the new Fellows of the Royal Society announced today.

There is a specific mechanism in our brains that deals only with recognising peoples’ faces and it is separate from the mechanism that allows us to recognise objects like houses, cars, horses or even people’s bodies, according to a study led by Dr Brad Duchaine at UCL. He shows how we recognise faces by analysing one man, who can’t tell one face from another, in a paper that will appear online in the journal ‘Cognitive Neuropsychology’ on 13th February 2006.

There is a specific mechanism in our brains that deals only with recognising peoples’ faces and it is separate from the mechanism that allows us to recognise objects like houses, cars, horses or even people’s bodies, according to a study led by Dr Brad Duchaine at UCL (University College London). He shows how we recognise faces by analysing one man, who can’t tell one face from another, in a paper that will appear online in Cognitive Neuropsychology journal on 13^th February 2006.

In a significant development for European higher education and research, University College London (UCL) today signed a research alliance agreement with Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), with the ambition of creating a tri-polar centre of world excellence in the cognitive and neurosciences.

In a study published in the latest issue of Current Biology, University College London (UCL) scientists have shown that the human brain holds and continuously updates an internal map of the body. The UCL team hope their findings will help explain how the processes in the brain which create a coherent body map may go wrong in people with neurological or psychiatric disorders.

If you study or work at UCL, the sight of dusty old boxes stacked up in the corner of a cupboard is a regular one. However, one intrepid academic bravely delved into the boxes and made an intriguing discovery, so much so it is the subject of a Radio 4 programme, to be broadcast at 11am on 6 January 2006.

The UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) is hosting two seminars by distinguished psychologists, in October 2005, open to UCL staff, students and the general public.

The Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at the UCL Institute of Child Health has embarked on a major programme to help children with memory problems resulting from brain damage.

UCL has created two new Pro-Provost positions – one for North America and one for South Asia and the Middle East - to maintain and develop the university's interests in these regions. Pro-Provost for North America, Professor Janette Atkinson , and Pro-Provost for South Asia and the Middle East, Professor Vince Emery, will take up post this month.

UCL’s Professor Alimuddin Zumla (Infectious Diseases and International Health), and Professor Faraneh Vargha- Khadem (Institute of Child Health) have both been shortlisted for the Healthcare and Education category in the Lloyds TSB Asian Jewel Awards (Southern Region) 2005.

Two UCL professors, John Collinge and Uta Frith, are among the new Fellows of the Royal Society announced today.

Frank Dobson MP visited UCL’s Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL and Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) during Brain Awareness Week (14 to 20 March 2005). He was hosted by the ICN’s Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow, who was his partner in 2004’s Royal Society Scientists & Parliament work-shadowing scheme.

A UCL neuroscientist has won a Leverhulme Trust Award. Dr Vincent Walsh, a Royal Society Research Fellow at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience has been granted £116,674 over 36 months for his project ‘Time, Space and Number in the Human Mind: A Common Source of Quantities?’

Two UCL professors have been acknowledged in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Professor Michael Batty was awarded a CBE for services to geography and Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith was also awarded a CBE, for services to cognitive development.

Professor Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, of UCL’s Institute of Child Health, was presented with the ‘Professional of the Year’ award by Cherie Blair for her outstanding contribution to mental health and child development at the fourth annual Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

UCL’s Professor Uta Frith (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) has published the second edition of her highly successful book Autism: Explaining the Enigma.