The Brains behind the Breakthroughs

A research showcase, “The Brains behind the Breakthroughs”, will be hosted by the NUI Galway NeuroSociety at 7pm in the Westwood Hotel on Monday, 9 March. This free public seminar will showcase the depth and scale of brain research being conducted in NUI Galway.

Designed specifically for a lay audience, it promises to give an insight to the life of a neuroscientist and the approaches being taken to tackle some of the biggest questions about the brain.

Professors, senior research scientists and students will present a variety of perspectives on their current areas of research which range from increasing our understanding of pain and brain pathology to the latest in medical neuroimaging and genetic studies.

Professor David Finn will introduce proceedings as head of the Galway Neuroscience Centre which represents the multi-disciplinary research groups focused on neuroscience in NUI Galway.

An additional Brain Awareness Week event, on the 11^th and 12^th March, NUI Galway’s Neuroscience Centre will be holding an exhibition in the Aula Maxima aimed at teaching secondary school students about the brain and disorders of the nervous system.

This event is being hosted to celebrate, Brain Awareness Week (9-15 March), which is a global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. It is a worldwide celebration of the brain that grows more successful every year. 

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UCC researchers investigate why some can resist stress

From left: Dr. Olivia O'Leary, Dr. Daniela Felice & Prof. John F. Cryan

Why on the rollercoaster of life are some people more resilient to the negative effects of stress than others?

Now University College Cork neuroscientists show that certain receptors in the brain play an important role in determining how we respond to different types of stress.  Their research is being published today in the prestigious international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 

Scientists based at the Dept of Anatomy & Neuroscience and the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in University College Cork, Cork, Ireland have identified a novel molecular mechanism that determines how the brain responds to chronic stress.  Prof John Cryan and Dr Olivia O’Leary, together with their PhD student Daniela Felice and their colleagues have shown that different subtypes of a given receptor (the GABAB receptor) can confer vulnerability to stress (both in early-life and in adulthood).  

Dr O’Leary says “although it is early days, these data show that these receptors could be important targets for the development of new drugs in the treatment of depression, where there is still such an unmet medical need”.  Indeed, Prof Cryan says that “understanding the molecular factors that enable the brain to be stress resilient is one of the most exciting areas in neuroscience research currently and these data position the GABAB receptor at the heart of such efforts”, “we still have some way to go to translate these findings into humans but we are very excited by these data“ Cryan continued.  

View Research paper here GABAB(1) receptor subunit isoforms differentially regulate stress resilience

World-renowned Galway neuroscientist returns to NUI Galway with formula for happiness

There is a formula for happiness after all. 

The equation has been described by Professor Ray Dolan, Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. Professor Dolan presented some of his latest research findings on Tuesday, 23 September, at NUI Galway in a lecture jointly hosted by the University’s School of Psychology, the Discipline of Psychiatry, and the Galway Neuroscience Centre.

In a talk entitled ‘Value Encoding in the Human Brain’, Professor Dolan explained how he and his team of researchers believe that happiness is governed primarily by expectation and surprise, work which they have published recently in the prestigious international journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Dolan and his team used a combination of behavioral neuroscience, computational modeling and neuroimaging approaches to study emotional reactivity in the form of momentary happiness in response to reward.

He also presented results from other work that may help to explain why some people have a propensity to gamble and take risks, while others avoid risk. He explained how the chemical transmitter dopamine in the brain is likely to play a key role in determining whether and how someone will gamble. Furthermore, dopamine’s actions in the brain also appear to play a critical role in learning. Professor Dolan demonstrated how a decline in dopamine levels with ageing can result in impaired learning. In turn, drugs that elevate levels of dopamine in the brain can act as cognitive enhancers.

Professor Dolan, who is a native of Monivea in Galway and a graduate of NUI Galway (known then as University College Galway), is a clinician scientist with a primary interest in the neurobiology of emotion and how emotion impacts on cognition, including decision making.  He has published over 500 peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and is consistently ranked among the top five most cited neuroscientists in the world in the field of neuroscience and behaviour.

View full Press Release here