UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences

Recent research led by UCL has identified a second major cause of ‘Startle disease’, which causes seizures in babies in response to loud noises and unexpected movements. Read: BBC News

A paper highlighting early results from the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS), a UCL-led multi-centre clinical trial which compared two treatments for carotid narrowing was recently listed in the Lancet as one of their ten most cited papers in 2010-2011. Narrowing of one of the carotid arteries in the neck (stenosis), which supply blood to the brain, is one of the major causes of stroke and is usually caused by deposits of fat in the wall of the artery, known as atherosclerosis.

Researchers from UCL and Imperial College London are carrying out a neuroscience study to examine for the first time how the resting brain responds to MDMA, the pure form of the Class A drug ecstasy. The study is funded by Channel 4, and recorded footage of it will be shown on two new science programmes this autumn, ‘Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial’, alongside a live studio debate to explore issues linked with MDMA.

Dr Rumana Chowdhury, research fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience writes about her experience presenting her PhD research at last month’s Human Brain Mapping Conference in Beijing, China.

 “This new evidence points the way to a completely new way of treating depression and could help explain why this disorder is often associated with a sudden change in body weight," says Dr Clare Stanford (UCL Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology). Read: PA

Founded just over 10 years ago by Professor Semir Zeki (UCL Cell & Developmental Biology), the idea of neuroaesthetics was to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art, in an attempt to find neurological bases for the techniques that artists have perfected over the years. Read: New Scientist

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 Drs Thomas Akam, Lorenzo Fabrizi and Rebeccah Slater, who were each awarded UCL Neuroscience Early Career Prizes at the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2012. The winners received prize cheques and certificates from Professor Trevor Smart, UCL Neuroscience Domain Chair, and Dr Akam and Dr Fabrizi also gave a presentation about their research at the symposium held on Friday 29 June at the Institute of Education.

Don't miss the 2012 UCL Neuroscience Symposium blog posts written by our student reporters.  Post-doctoral Research Scientists Fiona Kerr and Oyinkan Adesakin (UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing and UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment) give a brief overview of the day in words and video, including their personal highlights. Ivan Alvarez Ferreira (UCL Institute of Child Health) and Joseph Jebelli (UCL Institute of Neurology) write about the presentations and topics that were their personal highlights. Dr Andrea Alenda (UCL Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience) discusses a presentation by UKPubMed Central and the wider issue of open access research. And finally, Fiona and Oyinkan highlight the poster session and various prize winners in words and video.  Read blog posts

Deaf people in the British Sign Language (BSL) community have had a long struggle to access dementia diagnosis and support, with serious implications for quality of life and treatment.