The Brain Under Attack

Your intestines are home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the microbiota. These microbes keep us healthy, from helping us digest food to interacting with our immune system. Growing evidence is showing that these gut microbes can also affect the brain, leading to the concept of a “gut-brain axis”. Conversely, events in the brain – such as injury or disease – can disturb the balance of bacteria in the gut. In this talk, we’ll explore this bidirectional pathway, and discuss the research being done to understand the role of the microbiota in brain diseases such as stroke.

Concussion is a common condition that is experienced by a range of people across society. Some have a mild head injury but suffer severe and prolonged symptoms, others have major head trauma but appear to have “recovered” within a few hours. The biological principles underlying concussion are poorly understood, our research aims to investigate the natural history of concussion in basic science and in humans.

Epilepsy affects over 10% of the UK population, and it can occur as a secondary condition to lots of other illnesses - for example brain tumours. Typically the seizures that are present in brain tumour-related epilepsy have been dismissed as just another symptom, but it’s starting to look like they may play a more important, sinister role in the progression of brain cancers such as glioblastoma. The biological mechanisms behind this interaction are still largely unknown but in this talk we’ll discuss some of the research we’ve been doing to tease apart the finer details.