News and Events – September 2007
CONFERENCES
Richard Jones, Paul Davidson, Carrie Innes, and Malik Peiris attended WorldSleep07: 5th World Sleep Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies in Cairns, Australia, 2-6th September. Two conference abstracts were published:
Davidson P, Jones R (2007). EEG spectral dynamics for lapse detection [Abstract]. Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 5(Suppl 1), A39.
Peiris M, Jones R, Bones P, Davidson P (2007). Detection of lapses of responsiveness from spectral and non-linear features in the EEG [Abstract]. Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 5(Suppl 1), A40.
Daniel Myall and Saskia van Stockum attended the International Basal Ganglia Society Conference (IBAGS2007), in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands (2-6th September). Daniel presented a poster:
Myall D, Shirakura Y, MacAskill M, Anderson T, Jones R. Parkinson’s disease affects eye and arm movements differently.
Daniel Myall also attended Virtual Rehabilitation 2007, in Venice, Italy (27-29th September). Daniel reports that there is a lot of research going on into the use of virtual environments to rehabilitate stroke sufferers and that there is considerable potential to use similar techniques to rehabilitate people with Parkinson’s disease.
EVENTS
The 21st Van der Veer Institute Brain Research Forum was held on Monday 10th September in the Beaven Lecture Theatre. Professor David Fergusson from the Christchurch Health & Development Study, University of Otago, Christchurch, was the invited speaker.
The Christchurch Health & Development Study has been in existence for more than a quarter of a century. It has followed the health, education and life progress of a group of 1,265 children born in mid 1977. This cohort has now been studied from infancy into childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The data gathered over the course of the study now comprises some 50 million characters of information describing the life history of this cohort. The Study has published over 230 scientific papers, books and book chapters. In this talk, previously delivered as a keynote address to the New Zealand Psychological Society, Professor Fergusson focused on those aspects of the study which were of interest to researchers of the brain and of behaviour.
GRANTS
Tim Anderson, John Dalrymple-Alford, Michael MacAskill, Richard Watts, Saskia van Stockum, and Ross Keenan were awarded a Canterbury Medical Research Foundation project grant of $74,394 for their project ‘Saccadic biomarkers in Parkinson’s disease’. The project will be carried out over 2 years and the grant will cover project working expenses, eye movement laboratory charges, structural MRI scans, salaries and patient travel reimbursement.
Tim Anderson, John Dalrymple-Alford, Michael MacAskill, Richard Watts, Tim Wilkinson, Saskia van Stockum, and Ross Keenan were awarded a Neurological Foundation of New Zealand project grant of $68,166 for their project ‘Saccadic function in Alzheimer’s disease: an fMRI study’. The project will be carried out over 12 months and the grant will cover project working expenses, fMRI scans, salaries and patient travel reimbursement.
