The European Dana Alliance for the Brain (EDAB) is an organization of 212 eminent brain scientists, including five nobel laureates, from 29 countries.
Launched in 1997, and modelled on the US-based Dana Alliance for the Brain Initiatives, EDAB is committed to enhancing the public's understanding of why brain research is so important.
EDAB brings the excitement of scientific progress to the general public and opinion-formers by working in partnership with charities, universities, schools, hospitals, the arts, the media and professional organizations.
Every March, EDAB coordinates Brain Awareness Week, during which hundreds of public events in dozens of countries celebrate the progress of brain research. EDAB has offices at the Dana Centre in London, UK; and in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Free Resources from the European Dana Alliance Available
The European Dana Alliance for the Brain offers a wide range of free publications on topics about the brain as well as health awareness and patient information resources.
The publications produced are available in several languages including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Recently, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish have been added to the EDAB publication list. All are available to download in PDF form.
Our Staying Sharp Series provides information for patients, carers, health professionals and families. Topics covered in this series touch on Chronic Health Issues, Depression, Learning Throughout Life, Memory Loss and Aging and Quality of Life.
For interests in Brain Research our Annual Report on Brain Research describes and interprets important advances in neuroscience of the previous year.
We also have resources for teachers and secondary school students with Mindboggling and More Mindbogglers which is packed with information for the brain in fun format of games, riddles and puzzles.
For those who wish to have those common questions about brain research answered there is our pamphlet Q&A: Answering your Questions About Brain Research. This will provide answers to commonly asked questions about the brain and its disorders e.g. how brain-imaging techniques have affected neuroscience research.
NEUROSCIENCE IN EUROPE TODAY
An Interview with Piergiorgio Strata for Public Service Review: European Union
Piergiorgio Strata, Director of the European Brain Research Institute in Italy and a member of EDAB, says that USA is the epicentre of science but that Europe is finally gaining ground. Although hampered by lack of funds, Europe leads the way in several areas of neuroscience, such as brain imaging and deep brain stimulation. Discoveries in brain plasticity are central to understanding memory and learning. A better grasp of the brain-mind interaction in recent years has spawned new disciplines: neuroethics, neurophilosophy and neuroeconomics.
For young neuroscientists, Strata advises, “Consider science not [as] a struggle, but a way to enjoy life.”
EDAB Presents ‘‘Our Creative Brains” at the British Science Festival
An invitation to speak at ‘The Boileroom’ is probably not what most neuroscientists would expect to receive. But on 8 September, this arts venue played host to a group of them, along with three artists and a choreographer.
The topic for this year’s EDAB event at the British Science Festival was ‘Our Creative Brains.’ The Festival took place at the University of Surrey – but EDAB was keen to lure the neuroscientists out of the laboratory and chose this city centre venue.
“We were celebrating imagination and the artist’s talent at expressing it,” said Professor Morten Kringelbach, a speaker from Oxford University.
But, of course, science itself is creative. To discover what science can learn about itself, Dr Richard Wingate from King’s College London collaborates with an artist and an art historian to explore the way that microscopic images of the brain are captured and have been represented since the nerve cell was first discovered.
“The most beautiful thing in science is to make data form a pattern,” said Professor Paul Matthews from Imperial College who chaired the event. Yet for synaesthetes, patterns and shapes are stimulated by – in Philippa Stanton’s case – voices. Synaesthesia is the merging of the senses. Dr Jamie Ward from the University of Sussex is working with Stanton to investigate how certain properties of voices come to manifest themselves visually.
Do people with damaged brains have as rich a life as those with healthy brains? asked Matthews. Artists Richard Aylwin and Shelley James responded with an emphatic ‘yes.’ Recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome was the source of James’s inspiration for the glass sculptures of vision. Aylwin specialises in arts development mostly for disadvantaged people or children. Creativity, they said, can be seen as an alternative form of the nervous system, a ‘deep place’ of experience and awareness that are central to every human being.
There are close links between movement and emotion. Kringelbach and choreographer and dancer, Subrathra Subramaniam, described how dance, for example, evokes emotion in ourselves and in others. There is pleasure in being creative and in the reaction of observers or participants.
“It was a really exciting event for us because scientists love ideas,” said Matthews.
Morten Kringelbach, Shelley James and Subathra Subramaniam are interviewed on BBC Radio, Leading Edge http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mgyr1
Brain Test Britain is Underway
Celebrities, grown ups, children…. Millions of us are trying out brain training games and gadgets.
‘Develop Super Memory’, ‘Activate Your Brain IQ,’ ‘Improve Your Precision and Cognitive Control’ claim the advertisers. We are being persuaded that these games do anything from a simple work out to boosting your brain power.
But do they really work? The Alzheimer’s Society has teamed up with the BBC’s Lab UK to launch Brain Test Britain, a unique trial that will seek an answer to this question. Brain Test Britain will investigate the effects of brain training on mental fitness.
The public is invited to participate in groundbreaking scientific experiments online. Volunteers are being asked to train their brains for 10 minutes at a time, three times a week, for at least six weeks. The trial is open to anyone aged 18 or over. Alzheimer's Society is particularly keen to recruit people over 60 as these participants will help to answer important questions about whether Brain Training could maintain brain function and whether it could play a role in developing treatments to prevent dementia.
Initial results will be announced early in 2010 but the experiment will continue for a further nine months looking closely at whether brain training can maintain or even improve the brain.
The Alzheimer's Society hopes results will be a step towards solving whether brain training can reduce the risk of dementia. Professor Clive Ballard, Director of Research, Alzheimer's Society said, “Every week thousands of people spend time exercising their brain using some form of computer-based brain training, but the jury's still out on whether exercising your brain can boost your brain power.”
Around 700,000 people in the UK currently have dementia and experts have estimated that by 2051, the number could stand at 1.7m.
The Alzheimer's Society said even if brain function does improve through using the tests, there would still need to be a long-term study into whether this improved brain function could help protect people against the disease.
But Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the charity, said the mass study could help solve "one of the biggest mysteries of the brain".
Brain Test Britain http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang/