A serious illness or brain injury can put a person into a coma: a sleep-like or a vegetative state where they are awake but unaware. These disorders of consciousness are sometimes not accurately diagnosed…
The voice is an important tool which we use to communicate and express ourselves. But our voices convey so much more than the words we say. Just a few words can reveal clues about someone’s gender, age…
As many as 500 brain scans are performed in Scotland every week. These scans are mostly used to diagnose - or rule out - serious diseases like strokes and tumours, but this is not their only function…
The brains of people with a family history of bipolar disorder but no symptoms react differently when shown emotive faces to those with no genetic history, a new study has found. The researchers who conducted…
This month, fMRI brain imaging celebrates its 20th anniversary. And so it should. It has come to dominate cognitive neuroscience. Massive amounts of precious funding are poured into it and thousands of…
Geoffrey Donnan, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Welcome to On the brain, a new Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Professor Geoffrey Donnan, a world-renowned stroke…
Dieting can cause brain cells to eat themselves, a new study has found. In a paper published by the journal Cell Metabolism, US researchers report that tests on mice revealed that hunger triggers a process…