Smooth Brain Society

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, better known as concussions, are poorly understood. This means diagnosis and proper management are difficult often leading to people living with the impacts of milder injuries for years. Asha Strom of the University of Birmingham talks about UoB's current project, Called mTBI predict, looking at multiple aspects of traumatic brain injury to identify biomarkers (biological identifiers) which will help better detect and manage concussions.

Link to project: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/metabolism-systems/translational-brain-science/mtbi-predict

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Dr. Frankie Fong, of Victoria University of Wellington, discusses imitation behaviors and how they are key to child development. He also shares his research on how these behaviours differ between cultures and influence digital media effects on children's socio-cognitive development.

Dr. Frankie Fong: https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/frankie.fong

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Dr. Nuzha Saleem is a Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington. She discusses her research working with youth from migrant and refugee backgrounds. She has particularly focused her work around understanding the role of friendships in educational performance, identity and feelings of belonging for people from refugee backgrounds. Fellow Youth wellbeing researcher Niusha Aryan joins as co-host as we learn about Dr. Saleem's transition from neuroscience into social research, her key take aways from working and advocating with people from refugee backgrounds and the development of a game which is designed to encourage friendship and relationship building

Dr. Nuzha Saleem: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/cacr/about/people/students-and-alumni/nuzha-saleem

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Dr. Jo-Anne Puddephatt of Edge Hill University is a mixed-methods researcher in the field of mental health, alcohol use, and co-occurring problems. She combines her experience of working in psychiatric intensive care units with her expertise using datasets to explore the patterns of drinking across individuals experiencing different mental health problems. Jo-Anne also conducts qualitative research and works with patient involvement groups to explore the mechanisms of co-occurring alcohol and mental health problems.

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Finally! after 47 episodes as host, Sahir takes his place in the wrinkly brained experts chair to talk about his research on how alcohol drinking by fathers can impact development of the future generations.

Amer Hussain and Jeremy Hall co-host this special episode where we discuss the importance of animal research, find out why Dr. Hussain gets rats drunk and talk about the importance of science communication.

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Bayesian Statistics allows combining prior information of a population to the current sample of experimentation to create stronger inferences. Dr. Taylor Winter, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics at University of Canterbury, uses Bayesian methods to investigate a range of societal and group factors (Social Psychology).

Dr. Winter takes us through some of the basic ideas around Bayesian statistics and how it differs from traditional methods of hypothesis testing in research. We discuss examples from his work on authoritarianism and social identity theory as well as learn the the differences between his time working in industry vs academia. Lastly, we discuss his culture focused projects including Dungeons and Dragons and how Māori culture can manifest behavioural change.

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Bethany Facer, PhD student at University of Liverpool and Science Communicator explains the intricacies of Parkinson's Disease. We discuss Beth’s Neuroimaging research into the neurodegenerative condition as she goes over some of the key biological mechanisms, clinical manifestations and current treatments which together highlight the need to better understand this multifaceted disorder. Later, co-host Pollyanna Ward and Beth discuss the importance of science communication in current times and how researchers can improve our communication skills

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/systems-molecular-and-integrative-biology/research/groups/brain-imaging/

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There is often a tendency to focus on physical rather than mental health during pregnancy. While rates can vary by country, research suggests that about 10 - 20% of pregnant women experience depression during pregnancy. This is higher than the average rate of 6% seen in the general population. The changes during pregnancy can also make it hard for mood disorders to be detected and treated. Dr. Stephanie D'Souza of University of Auckland joins to discuss her research as maternal depression and antidepressant use. Dr. D'Souza goes through her research as we talk about some key things to be aware of and why research in maternal health is hard to undertake.

Important links:
https://pada.nz/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help

Dr. Stephanie D'Souza Bio: https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/s-dsouza

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At its core, Stoicism is a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom: something one uses to live a virtuous life. However, the English language has dealt great injustice to the word “Stoic.” Dr. John Sellars, Reader in the History of Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Research Fellow at King's College London, joins along with Dr. Johannes Karl, Dublin City University, to give us an introduction to Stoicism and how these ideas born in Ancient Greece  have been instrumental in the modern day through understanding emotions, designing behavioral therapies and conceptualizing developmental psychology.

Dr John Sellars : http://www.johnsellars.org.uk/

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Dr. Chris Maymon, of Victoria University of Wellington, talks to us about his research on the experience of being Present. Him and his team use virtual reality to test the causal role of subjective and physiological components of fear in generating presence. Dr. Maymon goes through the background of understanding being present as a concept and how it is measured, the use of virtual reality in his experiments and some of the interesting findings including how your subjective fear and not your heart rate and other physiological measures impact our experience of presence.

Read the paper here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379928195_The_presence_of_fear_How_subjective_fear_not_physiological_changes_shapes_the_experience_of_presence

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