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The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, it produces our every thought, action, memory, feeling and experience of the world. At this event we will be focusing on medical research aiming to understand the way our brains work, and the ways they can be repaired, with talks on ALS and weight-loss interventions.
Unravelling motor neurons disease one cell at a time
Patricia Thomas
(PhD student)
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating condition where individuals die 3-5 years post diagnosis. ALS is caused by the loss of motor neurons, which are responsible for all forms of movement. The ways in which these are lost in ALS remains poorly understood. We have developed a “disease-in-a-dish” model of ALS using 800 single motor neurons taken from subjects with ALS. We are investigating how these motor neuron genes work together, what goes wrong with gene-gene communication in ALS, and have identified candidate genes which may be contributing towards motor neuron death in ALS.
Resisting Temptations. Can we do it?
Samantha van Beurden
(PhD Student)
If you have ever tried to manage your weight, you'll have felt the power tasty food can have over us. Resisting temptations is hard! Even with strong intentions people struggle to lose weight. This stems in part from a tug-of-war between in-the-moment desires and long-term goals. We can use various techniques in that tug-of-war to help resist temptations and change our eating behaviour. Samantha will discuss the development and evaluation of an app-based intervention to support dietary change for weight management and show you some techniques to resist the biscuits with your cup of tea.
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