Welcome to the Brain, Language and Behaviour Lab! In this post, we introduce our multidisciplinary team working together towards a common goal, while across different areas of expertise and sites around Bristol, UK.
Core Team
Dr Anna Piasecki is an Associate Professor of Psycholinguistics and the academic lead of the Brain, Language and Behaviour Lab. Anna has expertise in bilingualism, first and second language acquisition and adult language processing. Her investigations have spanned various areas of linguistics – including vocabulary, phonology and syntax – as well as the intersection between language, memory and cognition. The main focus of her current work is on applied research, with defined benefits for vulnerable and underrepresented populations.
Mr Neil Barua PhD, FRCS(SN) is a Consultant Neurosurgeon specialising in brain tumour surgery at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, Visiting Professor at UWE Bristol, and the clinical lead of the Brain, Language and Behaviour Lab. His research interests include awake craniotomy, brain/computer interfaces, drug delivery to the brain and quality of life studies. He completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Bristol and has experience of pre-clinical, translational and clinical research. Along with Dr Anna Piasecki and Prof Fiona Cramp he co-supervises PhD students undertaking a range of projects with the ultimate aim of improving quality of life in brain tumour patients.
Mr Will Singleton PhD, FRCS(SN) is a Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, which a Tessa Jowell Paediatric Neurooncolgy Centre of Excellence. As the paediatric lead at Brain, Language and Behaviour Lab, Will’s clinical expertise lies in paediatric neuro-oncology, epilepsy and functional paediatric neurosurgery, including deep brain stimulation and awake craniotomy. His research interests include paediatric neuromodulation and translational neurosurgery – specifically developing methods of direct central nervous system drug delivery and investigating their utility as novel therapeutic strategies.
Dr Kris Kinsey is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and member of the Psychological Science Research Group (PSRG) at UWE. His previous research focused on identifying biological and cognitive markers of development related disorders, examining the neural systems that subserve vision, attention and language processing. Kris’s recent multidisciplinary work concerns health and technology with an aim towards developing applied solutions for diagnosing, monitoring and navigating health related issues. In his role at the BLB Lab, Kris supports the team with his expertise in imaging techniques, including MEG, fMRI, EEG, infrared eye-tracking and traditional psychophysical measures.
Hajira Mumtaz is a PhD student at the BLB Lab. Her project focuses on the design of intraoperative tests with increased sensitivity and that can allow for more personalised, comprehensive and valid evaluation of speech function that is beyond single word testing. With a more specific and sensitive battery of language tests as the outcome of her project, Hajira hopes to contribute towards introducing intraoperative tests that can positively impact the quality of life of patients requiring brain tumour surgery. Prior to this, Hajira did an Erasmus Mundus joint MSc degree in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL+) at the Universities of Groningen, Potsdam and Eastern Finland.
T. R. Williamson (Tom) is a PhD student in the BLB Lab. His research is centred around understanding what the nature of neurosurgical language tests should be, and, consequently, what kinds of novel tests can be conceived to better preserve linguistic abilities postopertatively for more diverse patient profiles. To this end, Tom’s work has concentrated on preserving the most basic communicative abilities of patients with more severe neurocognitive, tumour-induced, symptoms, and the more complex linguistic abilities that current tasks do not have the sophistication to reach. Tom has also lectured and supervised undergraduate students at UWE, and does research at Oxford and the University of Southern California.
Sonia Mariotti is a PhD student in the BLB Lab and Associate Lecturer at UWE. Her work is devoted to improving the quality of life of brain tumour patients through the preservation of their communicative abilities. Her research in awake craniotomy language testing focuses on bilingual patients and how to isolate and preserve bilingual components for successful communication. Sonia has previously worked in NHS stroke rehabilitation services, supporting patients with language and cognitive impairments. Her research activities at the BLB Lab are a continuation of her desire to bridge the gap between academia and clinical practice, to aid both practitioners and patients.
Madeleine Farrow is a Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist working with patients with brain tumours at Southmead Hospital, Bristol. She sees neuro oncology patients at diagnosis, as part of a prehabilitation service, provides pre-, intra-, and postoperative language assessment for patients with high grade brain tumours requiring awake language mapping and supports patients in the community through to end of life. As well as awake language mapping, her clinical interests include dysphasia, cognitive communication difficulties and prolonged disorders of consciousness
Dr Margaret Newson, PhD, CPsychol, is a Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist who recently joined the Brain, Language and Behaviour Lab as an honorary Visiting Fellow after retiring from North Bristol NHS Trust. Her clinical work focused on diagnostic assessment, cognitive assessment during awake brain surgery and predicting neurosurgical outcomes. During her career, she has enjoyed working in various clinical teams with excellent colleagues, including Neurologists, Neurosurgeons, Neuropsychiatrists, Nurses, Speech and Language Therapists and Occupational Therapists. Her research interests include improving measurement of cognitive functions, early diagnosis of dementia, and optimising outcome following brain surgery.
Molly Cree is a Speech and Language Therapist with over 10 years of experience working with patients who have acquired communication and swallowing impairments. Among other areas, she has worked within stroke rehabilitation, neuro-oncology and neurosurgery to assess, diagnose and treat various communication difficulties in a holistic, person-centred way. She has worked closely with the team at UWE to implement testing materials with patients undergoing awake craniotomies and continues to have a keen interest in this area of Speech and Language Therapy.
The clinical team at Southmead comprises other key people, including many registrar neurosurgeons, neurophysiologists, anaesthetists and oncology nurses. We will be adding their details in due course.
Our Honorary Research Associates and Assistants
Our work is frequently supported by students at different stages of their academic journeys. From undergraduate student volunteers and interns, through to postgraduate researchers and international collaborators, they all contribute in so many key ways to our overarching mission. Some of them are featured here but there are many more, current and past, and we are very grateful they continue to support our work.
Filipa Da Costa Gaspar is our absolutely brilliant illustrator, who has with the utmost creativity, patience and professionalism, created many hundreds of images for our clinical resources; first and foremost for BOATIM. Filipa studied BA(Hons) Animation at UWE and is now a self-employed production designer, 2D artist and illustrator.
Joshua Barraclough is a research assistant and volunteer at the BLB Lab. Utilising his speech analysis expertise, Josh is working alongside Hajira Mumtaz and supports our IMPACT project. The groundbreaking details and insights from this project will be revealed shortly.
Lydia Wiernik is an Honorary Research Associate at the BLB Lab. In her role, she helps out with stimuli creation, data analysis, and study design, and is always happy to contribute insight from her knowledge of signed languages. Her interests are in neurolinguistics and sign language linguistics, and especially the intersection of the two. While collaborating with the BLB Lab, Lydia has completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the influence of sign language acquisition on cognitive strategies for non-linguistic perspective taking, and the relationship between embodiment, multimodality, and the brain.
Bailey Ajayi is a recent UWE Psychology graduate and a research assistant in the BLB Lab. Under the supervision of Sonia Mariotti, he supported EEG data collection and participant coordination for a project exploring bilingualism. He also completed a dissertation investigating perceptual learning using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Bailey has a strong interest in consciousness and cognitive neuroscience and will be pursuing an MSc in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. His time in the lab has strengthened his research skills and deepened his passion for brain-based science.
Aleksandra (Sasha) Trepalenko was an international student enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL++) programme. As part of that programme, Sasha spent her final semester at the BLB lab working on her internship and thesis alongside Tom Williamson. For her internship, Sasha worked on annotation of gesture experiment materials, which deepened her knowledge of non-verbal means of communication. Using these new insights, Sasha’s thesis went on to explore a new multitasking paradigm for potential use in awake brain surgeries. We designed a new combination of tasks and tested it in healthy native British English speakers.
Eimear McKnight studied linguistics as an undergraduate and master’s student at the University of Cambridge. Their interests span theoretical syntax and phonology, Chinese, and sign language syntax. In the BLB Lab, Eimear has assisted with the annotation and analysis of corpora, and has enjoyed learning more about the neuropsychology of language. They have worked in the medical publishing sector as an Editorial Coordinator, and have recently taken up doctoral studies at the QMUL.
Rachel Peal was a research assistant at the BLB Lab. Working with Tom Williamson, she supported the development of materials, study design, data analysis, and acting as a confederate, Rachel has been crucial to data collection. As a graduate UWE Psychology student, she is interested in the psychological mechanisms underlying multimodal communication and provides a psychological perspective to conceptualisation and theory development. Rachel has enjoyed developing her research design and analysis skills, which will benefit her in many future endeavours and chosen career path.
Get in touch with us on BLB.Lab@uwe.ac.uk us if you have any questions or are keen to join our team!
List
Open-Access Resource: The British Object and Action Naming Test for Intraoperative Mapping (BOATIM)
Meet the BLB Lab members
Why we do what we do
British Council funds project to develop a comprehensive model of language in the brain
And the winner is… When your work matters and gets noticed
It’s not only about doing research and improving care – our annual tradition of raising funds for Brain Tumour Support
List
Open-Access Resource: The British Object and Action Naming Test for Intraoperative Mapping (BOATIM)
Meet the BLB Lab members
Why we do what we do
British Council funds project to develop a comprehensive model of language in the brain
And the winner is… When your work matters and gets noticed