"Don't fight blind! - treating problems with the wonders of neuroimaging"

To coordinate our behaviour different regions of the brain communicate through long connections, like wires in a computer. Disturbing these connections may mean some behaviours are difficult for the brain to coordinate. Individuals with severe forms of medication-resistant epilepsy have surgery to remove the areas of the brain causing their seizures. Exactly which portions of the brain are removed is dependent on the surgical method used. By using pseudo-neurosurgery, we can see the impact of these surgical methods on the connections across the whole brain.

Doctors routinely use medical images to detect and assess diseases within the body. The medical imaging doctor (radiologist) or radiographer uses knowledge of human anatomy and a trained eye to differentiate normal from abnormal images, usually based on differences in image contrast, texture, and size of known structures. Advances in medical imaging techniques now enable the functional status of tissues to be assessed, which has improved diagnosis of many diseases. I will discuss some imaging techniques currently used in clinic and novel techniques to measure vascular function in the brain.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting roughly 62% of those diagnosed. It is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory, thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In this talk I hope to discuss common facts and misconceptions about Alzheimer’s disease before explaining current developments in neuroimaging research into this disease. This research aims to help us to learn more about Alzheimer’s, its progression and how we can slow down the deterioration of the brain and decline in cognitive abilities.