With Brain Awareness Week underway, the timing was ripe for
this week’s joint conference of the Neurological Alliance of Ireland and the
Irish Brain Council: Research and
Healthcare Responses to the Challenge of Brain Conditions in Ireland. It
was a half-day event, packing a lot of interesting talks into a slim timeline.
Mark Ferguson of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) opened the
day with a discussion of SFI’s past and future, underlining SFI’s extensive
collaboration with industry. He also highlighted plans to create a more
targeted funding mechanism for PhD students; previously, although a lot of PhD
students have been hired via SFI funding, this has been a lot more “top-down”,
i.e. coming from Professors with the more major research grants SFI is known
for.
Speaking of which, David Henshall’s talk on FutureNeuro struck
me as a real template on how to get a large tranch of funding from SFI, but
more importantly it represents an ambitious research program targeting motor neuron
disease and epilepsy. The project aims to further knowledge in both diagnosis
and treatment for these disorders; for example, how molecular therapies (which
tend to be relatively bulky) can cross the blood-brain-barrier. The work of
FutureNeuro also covers the increasing electronic storage of health records,
with a view to creating greater use of genetic information as this becomes
recorded in a greater number of patients.
The Promethean ambition of Henshall’s work was matched that
of Ian Robertson, who discussed the work of the Global Brain Health Institute in training research fellows, identifying risk factors for the development of
dementia and initiatives to prevent/offset the development of dementia. He
spoke about cognitive reserve (a favourite topic of Robertson’s), as well as
how dopaminergic function in striatal regions may underlie what is ostensibly
more cortically-based decline in cognitive performance in older adults. In
closing, Robertson paid emotional tribute to Chuck Feeney, highlighting how Atlantic
Philanthropies (which recently came to a close) is to thank for the Global Brain
Health Institute.
Cora O’Neill highlighted her work at the Cork Neuroscience
Centre at University College Cork, linking the brain-gut-microbiome axis to a
molecule associated with Parkinson’s disease (alpha synuclein). She highlighted
the broader area of changes in the microbiome with age, and particularly
between residential, nursing home care and older adults living in the
community. O’Neill also gave generous coverage to work by John Cryan and Ted
Dinan at UCC, including a mention of the dementia caregiver study I have worked
on with Gerard Clarke.
At coffee/tea it was great to see a couple of posters looking
at caregivers for people with other serious neurological problems, including
one on carers for people in a persistent vegetative state as well as a poster
on acquired brain injury in general.
The second session of opened with a more frontline clinical
perspective from Timothy Lynch, who spoke about neurology services in Ireland.
Although things are improving in terms of waiting lists, there is a need for
greater multidisciplinary teamwork in Ireland; there is a serious lack of
clinical neuropsychologists, and even if all the necessary funding to hire them
were there, there still wouldn’t be enough suitably qualified people to fill
the posts.
The meeting closed with by a representative of Fred
Destrebecq, Executive Director of the European Brain Council, highlighting the
health economics of brain diseases and mental disorder, which is somewhere in
the order of €800 billion for Europe. He also drew attention to the Value of Treatment white paper, which
outlines unmet need in early diagnosis and treatment of mental/neurological
disorder in Europe.
The meeting as a whole indicated the scale of health
challenges facing our society. It demonstrated the ambition of those researching
this most complex area, and the determination of those treating the people
these issues affect.
Related posts
Why not check out the "Psychology in Mind" podcast with Gareth Stack: https://garethstack.com/2018/01/30/psychology-in-mind-episode-1/
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