What Goes On In Your Head?

Let’s start with some questions. R+ + you = what? What would you do for dopamine? What goes on in your head? What goes on in your teenager’s head? The last question was focus of workshops run by artist Jim Lockey, and the culmination was What Goes on in Your Head?, an installation and talk on behaviour and the brain.

The installation presented a range of answers to this question from the teenagers that took part. The art and words they created ranged from the direct and light-hearted to the profound. The installation aimed to show that when we ask a teenager this directly, or in the form of an exasperated rhetorical monologue, the answer is more complicated than you might think.

Tracy Mapp, an expert in the field of behaviour management, built on this with research about the growing teenage brain, paying particular attention to several areas. The first was the relationship between a person’s behaviour and the behaviour of those around them. The second was on dopamine and a teenager’s high senstivitity to it, as well as its implications for behaviour. What Goes on in Your Head?also looked at the changing structure of a teenagers’ brain, at the process of synaptic pruning in operation that takes the brain from a child to an adult. Moving on to consider ways of changing behaviour, Mapp challenged the view of punishment as an effective technique and explored instead the power of positive reinforcement - otherwise known as R+.  What Goes on in Your Head? explored behaviour; it’s origins, it’s influences and techniques to change it using science and experience.

-       Dave Horn

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Why Is Synaptic Pruning Important for the Developing Brain? – Scientific American

Swedish Speed-Camera Pays Drivers To Slow Down – Wired

Wild teenage behaviour linked to rapid cognitive change in the brain – Guardian

Kevin Becomes a Teenager – Harry Enfield and Chums (1994)

Unthinkable // Helen Thomson

Life is stranger than fiction. On the same day that I watch an episode of Black Mirror and consider the brutal potential consequences of living with extreme empathy, I join the audience for a talk by Helen Thomson. We listen to Joel’s life story. He is also a doctor in a hospital and, by dint of an extremely rare neurological condition, is also able to feel another’s pain as his own. His condition is the result of a faulty mirror neuron response. If he witnesses an event that causes an emotional or physical response in another person, he feels it as though it is happening to him. 

His is one of ten stories contained in Thomson’s book Unthinkable. As an audience, we inhale in simultaneously sympathy as we hear that if he sees a patient die, he feels his own breathing falter and his body begins to shut down. Even though he’s developed techniques to override these powerful sensations, his mirror touch synaesthesia impacts every waking hour of his life.

Thomson: scientist, writer and consultant for New Scientist, is fascinated by the infinite ways human beings see the world. She is an explorer, satisfying her obsession with learning more about those brains that don’t look like everyone else’s by travelling to meet people with rare conditions across the planet. What is it like when you live your life thinking you are a tiger or wake up dead?

The talk feels a bit close when I realise that I most likely have a mild form of synaesthesia based on her descriptors of the condition. I wonder, does everyone else in the room feel prompted to consider their own unique brain chemistry and connections?

Susan is constantly lost in familiar surroundings due to deficits in her ability to form a consistent mental map. Thus, even finding her way from the bedroom to the bathroom is a daily challenge. What is more extraordinary than this unusual perception of the world is her resourcefulness. She has developed remarkable strategies to combat her condition. She spins like Wonder Woman to reset her brain and flip her map into some semblance of familiarity. Every day she behaves like a superhero.

The talk prompts us to ask questions of ourselves. What are our own powers in the face of adversity? How might we overcome life’s considerable challenges? Most importantly Unthinkable encourages us to become more curious about who we are and which of our myriad perceived flaws make us unique and powerful.

- Melissa Jacob

 

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Helen Thomson

Synethaesia

What is a Mirror Neuron? - American Psychological Association

The Strange World of Synesthaesia

Black Museum - Black Mirror

Intimacy/Tingle/Sound // Nwando Ebizie

Intimacy / Tingle / Sound is tranquil and easy to adapt to.  Cushions were dotted around the wooden floor, the lighting neither light nor dark and the rooms pillars providing a natural division for people to 'find their own space'. Audience are encouraged to sit and have hands massaged, which is pleasant though unusual for a meditative setting. It gives the uninitiated a passage into stillness. This sensory experience is hosted by three women dressed in ethereal floating costumes and exuding personal calm and charisma.

A giant screen shows a seascape and gently crashing waves, providing another anchor for calm. The repeating cycle of sensory experience includes a whispered story-telling that clashes with the calm environment as a dark tale unfolds. After the massage you're encouraged to make your way to lay on the ground using a cushion for your head. I sat up against a wall, cross-legged. As I'm familiar with dropping into deeper brainwave activity I rarely heard the words.  

There were people who were seemingly unfamiliar with the processes of meditation who looked uncomfortable at the idea of trusting the process leaning on cushions with their body's twisted on their sides to accommodate it. It was perhaps a mixture of resistance and a need to know more of what was expected of them, which of course is nothing, but trusting in that is part of the waking-up (to ourselves) process. 

The soundtrack reminded me of Centerpointe's Holosync Brain Sounds, which I found challenging for reasons I found out when I attended training in Anna Wise's Awaking the Mind system. The training measured your brainwaves during guided meditation and revealed your VAK system, your individual sensory modalities - visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. They told some very interesting stories about monks they'd tested who'd meditated for decades and never moved out of beta brainwaves to obtain the proven health benefits of stillness.

Nwando Ebizie was telling the tale when I arrived and someone else was continuing as I left.  It was a modern take on the meditative brain state, and a short introduction for the uninitiated.

-    Jane Unsworth

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Brainwaves and Meditation - Science Daily

Centrepointe Holosync Meditation

Anna Wise - Awakening the Mind 

Mindfulness vs Meditation - Medical Daily

Pete Blackaby - Humanistic Yoga

GREY MATTER // Spasm

Neurocriminologist Adrian Raine is a controversial figure in British science. He researches the biological basis of crime and asks questions that others shy away from. If you could use a brain scan to predict someone would become a psychopathic murderer, for example, shouldn’t you do that?

Raine’s thesis is the inspiration for Grey Matter, a play set a few years hence in a secure neurotreatment centre. This facility is where young men will find themselves if they fail their 18+ test – an assessment of their likelihood to commit murder, which is now compulsory since a mass school shooting. Scanned, probed and treated, they can get out if their test scores improve – but the prospects are grim in the desolate, violent environment, and meanwhile, their real lives outside move on without them. 

The parallel drawn by the show’s creators to today’s young offender institutions could hardly be clearer. 5000 young people are currently detained, often with little hope of rehabilitation and sometimes at the risk of extreme violence, as a Panorama programme earlier this year showed.

Yet, if there is a way to predict crime, do we have a moral duty to do so? The film Minority Report explored such questions, using the psychically-gifted precogs to enable authorities to catch perpetrators before crimes had been committed.

Raine’s precogs are the brain scans of offenders, on which he indicates enlarged or damaged areas he says could have predicted their behaviour. However, as many opponents point out, in modern social neuroscience, brain scans are notorious for their pretty colours and poor statistical significance.

Not even Raine’s discovery that his own brain had structures similar to his psychopathic test subjects made him abandon his perspective. His own wayward behaviours seemed to fizzle out in the environment of a new school at age 11.

But others may not be as lucky. Grey Matter shows us the possible risks we face if a government technocrat decides to adopt Raine’s theories to tackle crime instead of grappling with the much knottier societal problems that are its more likely roots.

- RM

Grey Matter ran at C Venues until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/grey-matter 

Adrian Raine’s work reviewed: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain

Treatment of young offenders: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/13/young-offenders-institution-restraint-injuries

Panorama programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ymzly

The problem with trying to use brain scans statistically: http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/abs/nrn3475.html

BRAIN MATTER(S) // Fen'Harel Theatre

Are you right-brained or left-brained? The two performers in the physical theatre production Brain Matter(s) take on the roles of one person’s interconnected brain as they struggle together to negotiate the challenges of life.

The idea that our brains' hemispheres take separate responsibility for emotion and rationality, confidence and doubt, anger and self-control, is one that brain-training gadgets and airport self-help books would love us to buy into. Brain Matter(s) deftly plays on these notions in the actors’ entertaining dialogue and choreography. The two halves are sometimes fitted snugly together as one, but at other times tumble, balance and fight, like an angel and devil warring for control of the one body.

There is some scientific basis to the belief that the two halves of the brain have different specialist functions. It first gained traction in the 19th century when French neurologists Marc Dax and Paul Broca realised that patients who had lost the ability to speak had all sustained damage to the left-hand side of their brain.

Broca’s area is still the name for the functional region in the brain’s left frontal lobe relating to speech production – although it’s sometimes found in the right frontal lobe of left-handed people, just to confuse anyone hoping for a clear-cut two-sided arrangement.

But this finding hints at the truly interesting aspect of brain hemispheres, and the focus of current neuroscience. Do the two halves process information differently? And how do they work together to produce all the complexities of human ability and behaviour? 

The staging of Brain Matters allows plenty of contemporary thinking about such issues. The female performer takes the more rational, ambitious persona, while the male performer is emotional and impulsive.

Another modern notion in neuroscience is that the specialism in our hemispheres gives us more ability to multitask. This production draws on all the performers’ skills to bring us new thinking on the old left-brain right-brain divide.

- RM

Brain Matter(s) ran at Venue 13 until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/brain-matter-s 

The myth of left and right brains: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-myths/201206/why-the-left-brain-right-brain-myth-will-probably-never-die

Marc Dax and Paul Broca and the discovery of the speech area of the brain: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17056493

Broca’s specialist language area explained: http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html

The advantages of having lateral speciality in your brain - multitasking: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810119/

DREAMCATCHER // Dreamcatcher

From Shakespeare to Emily Bronte and beyond, many authors have given dreams the power to direct, challenge and reveal. In Dreamcatcher, young Indian playwright Kashyap Raja explores whether dreams may hold the key to unlocking your subconscious mind and your destiny.

The significance of sleep is a hot topic in modern science. Researchers have recently uncovered evidence that our brain has a plumbing network called the glymphatic system, which they believe may be responsible for clearing out dementia-causing toxins while we doze.

But dream analysis is still on the borderline with pseudoscience. Sigmund Freud’s idea that we act out our desires in dreams is undermined by a study showing that paralysed people dreamt about walking less than average, even though they all expressed a desire to regain that ability.

Carl Jung also taught that dreams are highly significant, containing truths and visions that emerge from different levels of our unconscious mind. This is the scenario that Dreamcatcher explores, with a machine that can look inside living people’s dreams, where, it’s revealed, you can always find your heart’s desire.

So does science support the notion that dreams can reveal the workings of the subconscious mind? Unfortunately neurobiological theory suggests that dreams emerge as we try to make sense of sporadic firings of nerves in our brain stem, which randomly activate memories. 

But scientists continue to explore what’s going on in the brain’s unconscious. The latest experiments show we can do complicated maths, as well as making rapid-fire judgements that guide our behaviour, without even knowing we are doing it. Is this how our destiny asserts itself?

The more that experts probe how our brains work, the more we realise how much processing is going on in our unconscious without our awareness. Currently, though, the suggestion that dreams carry great significance seems like wishful thinking. (RM)

Dreamcatcher ran at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dreamcatcher 

The discovery of the brain’s glymphatic system: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/3584/scientists-discover-previously-unknown-cleansing-system-in-brain.aspx

Significance of sleep to brain cleansing: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep

Neurobiological reasons for dreams: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2010/04/07/why-do-we-dream/#.V9m5A_krKUk

The power of our unconscious mind: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160315-the-enormous-power-of-the-unconscious-brain

SHIMMER SHATTER // Sofie Hagen

Sofie Hagen’s show, Shimmer Shatter, busts a few myths about introversion. It clearly indicates that being an introvert does not mean you are cold and closed-off. It doesn’t mean you won’t stand up and be very funny in front of an audience. And it doesn’t mean you are unable to tell people about the strangest and most personal aspects of your life, like the time you married a plank of wood and invited your school friends around as witnesses.   

What is true, though, is that inside an introvert’s brain particular things are happening. The neurotransmitter dopamine is to blame. It makes us all, whatever our personality, more talkative, alert and motivated to take a risk.  

But while extroverts love the thrill of chasing the release of more and more dopamine, for an introvert the joy of dopamine more quickly turns to overstimulation. In fact, as Dr Marti Olsen Laney has recently written, introverts favour the reward of a different neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. Very differently to dopamine, this chemical leads us to turn inwards, to reflect and focus, preferably somewhere calm.  

As an introvert, Sofie Hagen reveals that she favours spending periods of time at parties hidden away in the toilets. She says walls are good because they are a place where a person is not.  

Yet she is still a great people person, and the combination of comedy and honesty in her show has clearly struck a real chord with the audience.

At the moment it feels like introversion is getting all the attention it may never have wanted. Books like Quiet by Susan Cain, and her TED talk, present the introvert/extrovert divide as the most fundamental dimension of personality, with at least a third of people on the introverted side. 

Maybe the time of the introvert has come. With the help of high profile people like Sofie Hagen, perhaps introverts will get their time to speak – if the extroverts of the world can just stop talking for a moment. 

- Rebecca Mileham

Shimmer Shatter ran at Liquid Room Annexe until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sofie-hagen-shimmer-shatter

Why extroverts and introverts are different: http://www.quietrev.com/why-introverts-and-extroverts-are-different-the-science/

BBC article on what makes someone an extrovert: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130717-what-makes-someone-an-extrovert

Dr Marti Olsen Laney’s book: https://www.amazon.com/The-Introvert-Advantage-People-Extrovert/dp/0761123695/?tag=quietrevol-20

Susan Cain’s TED talk The Power of Introverts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4

ELEPHANT OF MY HEART // Prospero Theatre

There’s a long and rich interplay between meditation and the arts, including music and artworks including the ancient Indian tradition of mandalas. 

But bringing meditation into conventional theatre is a little more unusual. Elephant of my Heart is a stage adaptation of Jessica Clements’ book of the same name: Clements herself even performs in the show’s chorus. It’s a memoir of her time in hospital recovering from a brain haemorrhage as a nine year old child. She believes that the inner travels she went on, guided by an elephant, triggered her healing process. 

Prospero Theatre adapt her story using familiar techniques of children’s theatre: puppets, songs, games, and audience participation. But there’s an emphasis on the body, and on creating a new language to talk about illness and recovery. Jess is taught that the scars covering her head are sewn up by a black panther’s whisker, and kept safe by invisible dragonflies. Medicalised terms are demystified by being paired with analogies from the natural world, in a holistic approach designed to lead Jess towards a new comfort with her recovering body.

At the close of the performance, Clements leads us on a simple visualisation, designed to help the audience find their own inner animals. It highlights the closeness between mindfulness exercises and the kind of imaginative games that children often play - their careful focus during  the visualisation suggests that perhaps children’s comfort with their own imaginations makes them more receptive to techniques that adults feel too inhibited to try.

Little is known about whether healing can be accelerated by meditation, but recent studies tentatively suggest that the stress-reducing properties of meditation can strengthen the immune system. Certainly, there are clear links between meditation and the state of mental wellbeing needed for a full recovery. But perhaps the strongest message of Elephant of My Heart is the importance of developing a language and story that enables people in recovery to understand their illness, whether or not that means cultivating an inner jungle.

- Alice Saville

Elephant of My Heart was on at the Edinburgh Fringe, Greenside, from 5-16th August. More information: http://prosperotheatre.com/prospero-community-company/elephant-of-my-heart/

The role of mandalas in meditation: http://www.chopra.com/mandalas-sri-yantras

More information on Jessica Clements’ book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-My-Heart-Jessica-Clements/dp/1452585725

Studies which tentatively suggest the positive impact of meditation on the immune system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26799456

4D CINEMA // Mamoru Iriguchi

Mamoru Iriguchi’s moving planes of flat projection are a visual signature, a recurring technique constructed through a wacky series of contraptions that disguise their sophistication. In 4D Cinema the footage projected onto them are used to question time itself, the ability of a subject to define their own home and the biographic responsibilities of the performer and audience. The nature of memory is as much its subject as Marlene Dietrich, both in what the audience remember of themselves as they were fifty minutes younger, and in thoughts of how your memory will survive after death.

It is apt that this questioning of memory happens through a screen. There is constant media speculation on the consequences of modern humanity’s deferral of the responsibility of remembering onto external devices. No longer do our brains contain sets of memorised phone numbers or addresses, they're filed away as discrete pieces of digital information accessed through a screen or a cloud. Iriguchi’s work highlights the risk that this trust of the screen might come to dominate our own memories. Believable biographical material is delivered through screen and authoritative speech, causing a brief cognitive dissonance with my vaguely recalled pop cultural history. Was what was said about Dietrich true, whether played forwards or back? Can I trust my disbelief without a surreptitious Google?

As the performance finishes, the last thing the audience see is themselves reversed in moving image, a playback of themselves entering unaware into the space. It’s a riff on self-perception and its communication, on the marketing of ourselves as a central concern, the modus operandi of social media and advertising, subcultures, clothing and rep. Like the mirror stage of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the point at which a toddler locates themselves in the image in the mirror, video documentation shows the subject to itself as something others see. In 4D Cinema our image is reflected back to a later version of ourselves, through an unaware entrance, and the ramblings of a reticent historical subject.

- LC

Mamoru Iriguchi - http://www.iriguchi.co.uk/About.html

How the Internet Inhibits Short-Term Memory -http://www.medicaldaily.com/information-overload-how-internet-inhibits-short-term-memory-257580

Digital Amnesia: Real or Not? -http://www.techtimes.com/articles/65431/20150709/digital-amnesia-spreading-due-to-internet-and-smartphone-use-or-crass-marketing-ploy.htm

Metaperceptions: How Do You See Yourself? -https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/metaperceptions-how-do-you-see-yourself

The Mirror Stage –http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2010/09/what-does-lacan-say-about-the-mirror-stage-part-i/

Mamoru Iriguchi/Lewis Church Interview (Exeunt) - http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/between-the-genres/

PULSE // Mairi Campbell

Full disclosure: when I hear Mairi Campbell’s voice, I feel at home. Campbell’s version of Auld Lang Syne is my regular YouTube go-to cry-song (it featured in Sex & the City The Movie) and when I hear her voice I feel safe, and warm, able to cry… I feel home. Watching Campbell’s journey to find her home and her authentic voice, therefore, felt like a journey I already associated with her.

Much has been written on the science of the voice and of music (Wellcome Collection’s This is a Voice exhibition being a recent major example), from the study of how the voice and ear physically understand and receive sound, to the chemicals released in our brain upon hearing music, to the physical benefits derived from dance. In Mairi Campbell’s Pulse, however, it is the quest to find the music which suited her body, to find the music which fit with her bones, which is the central journey. The history of music (and folk music in particular) is inherently bound to questions of nationality, or migration, of colonialism, and of intercultural exchange – and this is an area around which Pulse treads lightly – but in Campbell’s journey, an idea of ‘home’ feels less psychological or political and more physical, even genetic.

Recent scientific studies have attempted to locate either a music gene, or a scientific correlation between distinct populations and the music they make. For Campbell, her experience with both classical music (at Guildhall and in Mexico), and folk music (both with and without footwork in Canada and Scotland), seems to entail a complex interplay between genetics, nationality, gender norms, environmentalism and spirituality. For us as audience members, however, we experience her music in the bones, the ear, the heart. Part of me wishes I understood, scientifically and intellectually, how music and this voice makes me feel home… or maybe not… I wouldn’t want my brain to get in the way. (BL)

Pulse is at Summerhall Old Lab until August 28th. Venue is wheelchair accessible and BSL shows are available - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/mairi-campbell-pulse

On Mairi Campbell: https://mairicampbell.scot/

This is a Voice Exhibition: https://wellcomecollection.org/thisisavoice

Nature vs. Nurture in Music Taste: http://phys.org/news/2009-11-nature-nurture-reveals-musical-genes.html

FINDING JOY // Vamos Theatre

Without words, and with masks, Finding Joy explores the impact dementia has on both the person with the disorder, and the people around them. Joy is a widow, living independently. She's visited regularly by her daughter and grandson, who witness her gradual deterioration. It starts with Joy putting strange items in the fridge, and a mix-up between some salad cream and some milk, and ends with her retreating into the past as the present becomes too confusing.

Dementia is a progressive disorder. It affects how the brain works, and in particular the ability to remember, think and reason. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, 850,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia. Worldwide, it's estimated that 135 million people will be living with it by 2050, and there have been warnings that a 'dementia tsunami' is coming. That said, the age-specific risk is thought to be falling, for men at least. The New Scientist reported this April that incidence of dementia in men in the UK has fallen by 41 per cent; there was only a 2.5 per cent drop for women.

There's no cure for dementia, and treatment tends to focus on making people's lives as comfortable and dignified as possible. In Finding Joy, the grandson visits one day bearing the gift of a toy dog. It's a glove puppet, which he brings to comic life to the sheer delight of his grandmother. At moments it seems like Joy thinks it's real dog, at others it's clear she knows it's make believe. Either way, the dog makes her happy and eases her distress.

In the real world, some dementia patients are being treated with PARO, a robot harp seal, and the results seem positive. Researchers at the University of Brighton say PARO reduces agitation and aggression, and promotes social interaction. An article in The Guardian quotes Claire Jepson, an occupational therapist at a specialist assessment unit for dementia patients. She says the robot seal 'allows people to still feel a sense of achievement, a sense of identity. They become the carer instead of the cared for.' Put simply, the robot is enabling some patients to find joy.

- HB

Finding Joy played Assembly Hall at 16:30 until 14 August - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/finding-joy

'What is dementia?': http://www.ageuk.org.uk/health-wellbeing/conditions-illnesses/dementia/what-is-dementia/

Alzheimer's Society: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk

Alzheimer's Research UK: http://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org

Dementia was one of the challenges nominated for the 2014 Longitude Prize: https://longitudeprize.org/challenge/dementia

'Dementia incidence for over 65s has fallen drastically in UK men': https://www.newscientist.com/article/2084859-dementia-incidence-for-over-65s-has-fallen-drastically-in-uk-men/

University of Brighton's PARO Project: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/healthresearch/research-projects/the-paro-project.aspx

'How Paro the robot seal is being used to help UK dementia patients': https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/08/paro-robot-seal-dementia-patients-nhs-japan

'PARO Therapeutic Robot': http://www.parorobots.com

Magic Me, UK-based intergenerational arts organisation who run arts programmes with residential care homes, inc. people with dementia: http://magicme.co.uk

TRACING GRACE // OffTheWallTheatreCo

Sixteen people are diagnosed with encephalitis – severe brain inflammation – every day in the UK, yet most of the public have never heard of it. Based on the real life experiences of writer and director Annie Eves, whose sister Grace was diagnosed with the condition at just three weeks old, Tracing Grace aims to open our eyes to the existence of encephalitis and the challenges of living with its long-term impact.
 
Making such a personal piece about such a serious but poorly-understood condition is a brave move, and the production has benefited from the input of Dr Ava Easton, CEO of the Encephalitis Society. As explained at the beginning of the show, the cause of encephalitis is unknown, although it’s related to infection in the body. Its effects are equally mysterious and unpredictable. In the case of Grace, who we follow from childhood through to her current age of 18, it’s described as a “headache that never stops”, punctuated by distressing fits and angry, screaming outbursts. Her family – mum, dad and Annie, portrayed both as a child and an adult – bear it all with loving fortitude, even when things turn ugly and violent.
 
We witness Grace’s towering fury at not having exactly the right sandwich filling (Laughing Cow cheese spread and jam), and her frustration at being unable to understand why she isn’t like other kids. We also meet Annie’s well-meaning but daffy social worker, nicknamed Mental Gentle, highlighting how support for families can fall woefully short in the face of such difficult circumstances. Yet despite the life-threatening fits and the increasing challenges of caring for Grace as she grows into adulthood, the play ends with a family decision to keep her at home rather than sending her into residential care. I cannot help but wish them all well for the future, whatever that looks like.

- KA

The current run of Tracing Grace at Paradise in the Vault has now finished.  https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tracing-grace
 
More information and support is available from the Encephalitis Society: http://www.encephalitis.info/

Q &A with writer and director Annie Eves: http://www.encephalitis.info/awareness/tracinggrace/

Brain on Fire – a Naked Scientists podcast focusing on brain inflammation: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/20150324/

THE BRAIN SHOW // Robert Newman

Robert Newman’s comedy routine in The Brain Show criticises research studies that he has encountered in popular science books about the brain and found wanting. He counters their arguments with a mixture of more robust science, appeals to common sense, and humour. The examples of “neurobabble” he uses in the show are not difficult to demolish, which means he does not have to get into scientific technicalities but can make his point before turning into a joke.

Neuroscience continues to be one of the areas of science most likely to be used and abused by people with something to sell, from self-help books to educational tools. It is often presented in a reductive way - “this part of your brain lights up when you're in love”. Newman’s debunking of specific studies challenges such a simplistic understanding of contemporary neuroscience. By deploying ‘common sense’ arguments, or returning to the 19th-century theories of Charles Darwin, however, he risks giving the impression that modern neuroscience is all on a par with the worst examples he can find.

Using brain imaging to ‘see’ what is going on in our heads is still a relatively young research discipline. While pioneering, it can also be speculative and open to criticism as researchers develop, challenge and hone their techniques. Debates around the application and interpretation of such studies have been going on - and increasing - within the field for many years.

The Brain Show encourages its audiences not to take at face value the claims made by and on behalf of neuroscientists. Those who are inspired not to dismiss neuroscience but to engage with it may also discover more of the best examples of the field, whether it's the growing use of brain imaging as a diagnostic tool or work informing and extending our knowledge of the anatomy of the brain. (MR)

The Brain Show is at 19:15 at Summerhall's Main Hall until the 28th August (not 15th) http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/robert-newman-the-brain-show/

This recent Nature video discusses how brain maps are made, including a new one compiled using MRI data: http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/brain-map/index.html

PET imaging is being used to visualise amyloid plaques, a sign of Alzheimer's disease: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160524124241.htm

Quartz reports on flaws associated with functional MRI research in particular: http://qz.com/725746/a-deep-flaw-has-been-discovered-in-thousands-of-neuroscience-studies-so-why-arent-neuroscientists-freaking-out/

An older piece by Guy Kahane discusses the philosophical challenges brain imaging presents: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/01/neurotrash-and-neurobabble/

This 2012 article in Nature set out issues around ‘blobology’ in MRI studies, and how researchers are making progress: http://www.nature.com/news/brain-imaging-fmri-2-0-1.10365

Debunking “neuromyths” in education: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/feb/24/four-neuromyths-still-prevalent-in-schools-debunked