Neuro-Night!

We spend our whole lives inside our brains, but what is actually going on in there? Advances in neuroimaging have changed how we understand the brain across a lifetime, from finding that you are technically still a teenager until 32 (yes, really), to the subtle shifts of normal ageing that are invisible to the naked eye. In this talk, Beth takes you on a whistle-stop tour of your brain from childhood to old age, exploring what MRI reveals as the brain changes across a lifetime, before landing on her own research into the brains of people newly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and what the scanner sees that nothing else can.

Human brain cancer is among the worst diseases to affect children and adults, and the traditional ways we're developing new therapies is not working. But what works for our canine friends could help us humans too! Every case in canine clinical trials is a dog who is treated - a step towards a new therapy for canine brain tumours and a step towards a new therapy for human brain tumours. It's a win-win-win!

How can one nerve affect your heart rate, digestion, mood, memory, and even how much pain you feel? No wonder so many researchers are trying to harness the power of "the wandering nerve", otherwise known as the vagus nerve. Stimulating the vagus nerve can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, from epilepsy to back pain, migraine to depression, and insomnia to recovering from a stroke. In this talk, Karen Leslie will cover what the vagus nerve can do and the latest research into vagus nerve stimulation.