Our congratulations go to Unit D.Phil. student Freya Marijatta for successfully defending her doctoral thesis, entitled “Comparative analyses of dopaminergic signalling in the mouse brain”, in her viva voce examination on 4th July 2023.

Freya’s viva examiners were Dr Paul Dodson (University of Bristol) and Professor Stephanie Cragg (University of Oxford).

Freya was supervised by Professor Peter Magill (MRC BNDU) and Professor Mark Walton (Experimental Psychology).

Congratulations to Unit student Camille Lasbareilles, Unit postdoctoral researcher Dr. Natalie Doig, and the Unit team behind “The Symphony of the Brain” video on co-winning the Director’s Award for Public Engagement for 2023.

The Award is given annually, on the basis of nominations made by Unit members, to recognise and celebrate the exemplary contributions of individuals or a small collective to the Unit’s extensive Outreach Programme.

Camille, Natalie and The Symphony of the Brain team received their Awards from Unit Director Professor Peter Magill at a special ceremony held at the Unit’s biannual Science Day.

Professor Magill commented “It gives us all great pleasure to reward the achievements of these deserved winners. Camille has demonstrated exceptional personal commitment to public engagement, playing a pivotal role in organising a series of popular outreach events at the Centre for the Creative Brain at St Edmund Hall. Natalie has shown outstanding leadership in public engagement, and is a tireless champion of the Unit’s outreach programme. Natalie’s colleagues clearly value her critical contributions to a wide range of highly successful outreach activities. The Unit team behind The Symphony of the Brain video - Demi Brizee, Natalie Doig, David Dupret, Shenghong He and Ashwini Oswal – deserve much credit for their vision, ingenuity and skill in creating an engaging resource that has done a brilliant job of promoting the public understanding of the Unit and its research.”

The Unit held its sixteenth Science Day on Friday 30th June 2023. Unpublished work and future research projects were the focus of discussion, and Unit members and visitors enthusiastically took the chance to offer the constructive criticism needed to support collaboration and cutting-edge research.

There were 8 short research talks and 15 poster presentations, most of which were given by the Unit’s early-career scientists. Attendees were also treated to two Keynote Lectures: A first by Professor Vladyslav Vyazovskiy of the University of Oxford, in which he gave an engaging account of the regulation of brain activity during sleep and waking; and a second lecture by Dr. Erika Ross of Onward Medical that showcased career paths in the neurotechnology industry as well as the development of medical devices for clinical interventions in neurological disorders and spinal injury.

Unit Director Professor Peter Magill commented: “Another fantastic showcase of interdisciplinary research, and a timely opportunity to review our collective progress in fulfilling the Units’ Mission. It was a pleasure and a privilege to see the next generation of our talented researchers in action and to learn from them.”

Warm congratulations to Camille for winning the departmental 3-minute thesis prize!

Camille presented at the annual Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences (NDCN) Thomas Willis day's 3-Minute Thesis competition. The 3-Minute Thesis presentation challenges DPhil students to present their research topic and its significance in three minutes. Camille presented her work using Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) with the help of some cartoon neurons which were very popular with the audience!

Warm congratulations to MRC Unit student Demi Brizee for winning the Gotch Memorial Prize 2022-2023, which is awarded by the board of management to a graduate student in the field of physiology with the best Oxford DPhil Transfer Status report.   

For her DPhil thesis research, Demi is examining the cooperative firing dynamics of the distinct populations of hippocampal interneurons using in vivo electrophysiological ensemble recordings in freely behaving mice. In this work, Demi combines analyses of the local field potentials and neuronal spike trains with input-defined and cell-type-selective optogenetic manipulations during spatial exploration and memory tasks. This work is intended to characterise the division of labour amongst the various types of hippocampal interneurons for the internal processing of mnemonic information. Demi's D.Phil. research is conducted in close collaboration with Dr Vitor Lopes-dos-Santos, in the Unit research group led by Prof. David Dupret.

We are pleased to welcome Yosra Hashim to the Unit as a visiting student.

Yosra is a medical student at University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland). During her 3-month visit to the BNDU, Yosra will join the Bogacz group and will be co-supervised by Dr Benoit Duchet. She will investigate phase-amplitude coupling in mathematical models constrained by data. Specifically, she will make use of electrophysiological recordings obtained in rodents by the Sharott group.

Warm congratulations to MRC Unit D.Phil. student Camille Lasbareilles for winning this year's Simon, Arpi, Marie & John Simonian Prize for Excellence in Leadership! The prize is awarded to an individual who has shown significant leadership qualities during their time at St Edmund Hall in any area, e.g. sport, charity work, journalism, theatre/drama, music, potential future academic leadership, or other outside interests.

Camille has distinguished herself as an active and enthusiastic member of the college. She organised several public engagement events for the Centre for the Creative Brain at St Edmund Hall with Prof. Stagg and Prof. Dupret, including 'Exploring Epilepsy through Art', 'Drawing the Human Brain' and 'Language Arts - Books, Comics and Language Learning'. She has also been involved in other public engagement activities, such as 'WIN-dow on the Brain', where she explained to the general public how non-invasive brain stimulation techniques work.

In her D.Phil at the Unit, Camille investigates the neurophysiological processes that govern motor control and motor learning in the healthy brain, and how these can be modulated using a type of non-invasive brain stimulation called transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS).

Congratulations to Unit Group Leader Dr Helen Barron on being awarded the title of Associate Professor by the University of Oxford.

Associate Professor titles are conferred annually in recognition of an individual’s distinction in their field as well as their wider contributions to research, teaching and administration/citizenship.

Unit Director Professor Peter Magill commented “We are delighted for Helen. This title is richly deserved, reflecting Helen’s remarkable research performance as well as many other academic achievements. Helen’s career is clearly flourishing!

We are pleased to welcome Lauren Zwienenberg to the Unit as a visiting academic.

Lauren is a PhD candidate and psychologist from Maastricht University (Netherlands), whose research focuses on the treatment of TMS for depression. Specifically, she is interested in better understanding the heart-brain connection, which she uses for target engagement with brain stimulation techniques. During her 3-month visit to the Unit, Lauren will join the Stagg lab and conduct a research project looking into the effects of different pulse shapes and pulse widths on TMS induced heart-brain coupling.

We are pleased to welcome Nima Mirkhani to the Unit. Nima has joined the Bogacz Group as a Postdoctoral Researcher to explore the effect of neurostimulation in neurological and psychiatric disorders using computational models.

Nima graduated from the University of Tehran in Mechanical Engineering in 2013 and later obtained his MSc from the same university. During his PhD in health sciences and technology at ETH Zurich, he focused on investigating novel spatially selective drug delivery strategies in cancer using living microrobots.

At the Unit, his research uses computational models to study the effect of brain stimulation in neurological and psychiatric disorders using computational models. Specifically, he is developing mathematical models to optimise the suppression of pathological oscillations in disorders like Parkinson's. Moreover, Nima is also interested in studying altered perceptual inference in psychiatric conditions, especially in the context of autism.