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Newsletter: April 2024
Welcome to the April newsletter from the Exeter Brain Network!
This edition includes exciting updates from across our network, including some great opportunities to get involved in upcoming events!
As always, we welcome any submissions that members feel would be valuable to share, so please get in touch! If you would like to contribute an item to be included in the EBN newsletter, please share them here, and they will be included in the next issue.
Contents:
NEWS | EVENTS | ONGOING RESEARCH STUDIES
NEWS
DOUBLE MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL GRANT SUCCESS
Congratulations to the recipients of the latest grants for the Medical Research Council (MRC). Professor Katie Lunnon of the Medical School has been awarded just under £1 million to investigate the epigenetic mechanisms in Huntington’s disease with world-leading expert collaborators, aiming to gain new insight into how quickly people develop the condition. Dr Akshay Bhinge of the Living Systems Institute has also received more than £940,000 to investigate how defects in chemical molecules within cells called RNA contribute to nerve death in motor neurone disease and highlight new ways to develop therapeutic drugs.
SPRINGBOARD GRANTS FOR TWO EXCEPTIONAL HEALTH RESEARCHERS
Two exceptional biomedical and health researchers at our Medical School have been awarded funds from the Academy of Medical Sciences, as part of its Springboard programme to support early career scientists to establish independent research programmes. Dr Yanfeng Zhang received £125,000 for his project to investigate how certain neurons regulate dopamine release in the brain, aiming to discover new therapeutic targets for disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Dr Thomas Laver received £123,000 for his project aiming to discover genetic causes of diabetes and related disorders by using novel methods to investigate large deletions of DNA found in patients. Thomas is recruiting for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Bioinformatics and Genetics for this work.
EXETER BRAIN NETWORK WEBSITE
Our new EBN website is now live: Exeter Brain | Exeter Brain | University of Exeter. If you have any news (e.g. successful grants, new papers etc.) or events coming up then please do send these over to researchnetworks@exeter.ac.uk.
EVENTS
N-CODE ANNUAL CONFERENCE - EXPO 2024
Do you want to meet representatives from major UK funders such as EPSRC, MRC, Innovate UK, NIHR, and the Epilepsy Research Institute to discuss funding opportunities for research projects in the field of neurotechnology?
Do you have an idea you'd like to pitch to win up to £10,000 feasibility funding? Or perhaps you have an interesting poster on community-based neurotechnology you'd like to present? Maybe you simply want to meet neurotech startups, charity organisations, fellow academics, and potential new collaborators?
We're excited to extend an invitation to our annual conference – the N-CODE EXPO, which takes place on the 10th and 11th of June at theStudio in central Birmingham.
This conference aims to bring together professionals from various sectors including healthcare, neurotechnology, academia, funding bodies, charities, and people with lived experience to explore the latest innovations and research in developing technologies for community-based diagnosis and management of neurological conditions.
Registration is now open here and will close on Friday 24th May, 17:00 (BST). For further inquiries or to register for any of the sessions, please contact us at ncode@contacts.bham.ac.uk
Travel support is available for up to 10 attendees with either lived experience of neurological conditions or those with limited resource (such as PhD students or ECRs who do not have their own conference funding).
We look forward to welcoming you to the N-CODE annual conference for insightful discussions and networking opportunities.
ONGOING RESEARCH STUDIES
SEARCHING FOR PPIE VOLUNTEERS FOR PAIN STUDY
PROOF OF CONCEPT FOR AN EXTENDED REALITY TOOL THAT AUGMENTS HUMAN PERFORMANCE
We are looking for participants who are aged 18 - 45. Any individuals with any existing pain-related, neurological, psychiatric, metabolic, cardiorespiratory, cancer-related diseases + those who are colourblind, deaf, epileptic, or pregnant are not eligible to participate in this study.
The study involves one visit lasting 1 hour. During which you will complete 9 trials of a dual task: (1) a ball searching task & (2) a semantic word task. 3 trials are completed with a VR headset, 3 without a VR headset but memory prompts, 3 without VR and without memory prompts.
After certain trials participants complete some short psychometrics about effort, environmental presence, simulation sickness.
All participants are paid £20 for their time for participation. Please contact Callum O’Malley at C.OMalley@exeter.ac.uk.
PAIN STUDY RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS
Want to help pain research? For this pain study we need healthy participants between the age of 18-50 for a study on pain modulation. You’ll visit the Exeter Pain Lab in the Clinical Research Facility four times (approx. 1 week apart) and run through a series of questionnaires alongside psychophysical, physiological and neurophysiological measures related to pain processing. If you would like to be involved, please email Josh Murphy at jm1459@exeter.ac.uk.
Exeter Brain is coordinated by Dr Sam Hughes and Dr Asami Oguro-Ando
Please email Sophie Clarke to submit items for future newsletters by the last Friday of each month. To find out more about our work, please get in touch with us.
