NUI Galway Hold Public Information Event for Brain Awareness Week

As part of the international Brain Awareness Week, staff and students of NUI Galway’s Neuroscience Centre are organising a public information exhibit in the Aula Maxima, Quadrangle on Tuesday, 11 and Wednesday, 12 March from 9am to 3.30pm.

Members of the public and children from local schools will have the opportunity to visit the exhibit to learn more about how the brain and nervous system work. 

The exhibit consists of interactive displays where visitors can learn more about the nervous system in a hands-on way.  For example, there will be various puzzles and tests of hand-eye coordination, visual perception, left/right handedness, creativity and many others.

Approximately 180 million Europeans are thought to suffer from a brain disorder, at a total cost of almost €800 billion per annum. 

At the event in NUI Galway general information about the brain will be available to visitors with the opportunity to learn more about brain disorders, via a series of large information posters prepared by the staff and postgraduate students of NUI Galway Neuroscience Centre. The posters cover a variety of illnesses including: Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Pain, Anxiety, Depression, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, Stroke, Brain injury and Spinal cord injury.

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Tongue piercing helps paralysed patients drive wheelchairs

An experimental device is enabling paralysed people to drive wheelchairs simply by flicking their tongue in the right direction. Users get their tongue pierced with a magnetic stud that resembles jewellery but acts like a joystick for a wireless system.

Researchers said on Wednesday that 11 people paralysed from the neck down rapidly learned to use the device to pilot their wheelchairs through an obstacle course full of twists and turns, and to operate a computer.

"It's really powerful because it's so intuitive," said Jason DiSanto, 39, who was among the first spinal cord injury patients to try out the system. "The first time I did it, people thought I was driving for, like, years."

The research, reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is an early step that allowed use of the device only inside laboratories. Larger studies in real-world conditions are required before it ever could be sold. And the tongue piercing may be a turn-off for some potential users, the researchers acknowledge.

But the work is attracting attention from specialists who say there's a big need for more assistive technologies for the severely disabled

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