Prof. Franck Ramus is the CEN’s first invited speaker for spring 2015

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Franck Ramus (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Institute of Cognitive Studies, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris) will be presenting some of his recent research on the brain basis of dyslexia  on Wednesday 7th January, 4-5:15pm, in Room 802 at the UCL-Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London. All are welcome to join us, and there is no need to book.

The title of Franck’s talk, and the abstract, are as follows:

Neuroanatomy of developmental dyslexia

This talk will review our recent research on the neuroanatomical differences between dyslexic and control children, covering voxel-based morphometry, analyses of cortical thickness and surface, white matter tractography, morphometry of the planum temporale, and analyses of gyrification patterns. I will further discuss consistencies and inconsistencies between our results and previously published research, and future perspectives.

 

Does non-invasive brain stimulation produce a cognitive enhancement? Depends!

A new paper published by Amar Sarkar, Ann Dowker, and Roi Cohen Kadosh has shown that identical transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) exerts opposite behavioural and physiological effects depending on individual trait levels. Recent studies have suggested that non-invasive brain stimulation can accelerate skill acquisition in complex tasks and may provide an alternative or addition to other training methods. However, the Sarker study suggests that zapping your brain might make you better at maths tests – or worse. It depends how anxious you are about taking the test in the first place. See here for the Sarker paper and here for a recent commentary in the New Scientist about a new meta-analysis which has struggled to find out what actual physiological effect tDCS has on the brain.

doc_brown_backtothefuture

(Note, this image is Doc Brown from the film Back to the Future, not actual tDCS!)