Cambridge researchers recognised as Future Leaders by UKRI
Future Leaders Fellowships are awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to support universities and businesses in developing their most talented early career researchers and innovators, and to attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.
The 75 “most promising research leaders” recognised today by UKRI will benefit from £101 million to tackle major global issues and to commercialise their innovations in the UK.
UKRI Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, said: “UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training, giving them the freedom to explore adventurous new ideas, and to build dynamic careers that break down the boundaries between sectors and disciplines.
“The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.”
The four Cambridge researchers are:
Dr Alecia-Jane Twigger (Department of Pharmacology)
Breastfeeding has been highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival”. A major priority of the WHO is to increase the global rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months up to at least 50% by 2025. However, many mothers worry about low milk production – a major driver for mothers switching to formula feeding. With funding provided by the Future Leaders Fellowship, Dr Twigger will establish state-of-the-art models of lactation with the aim of developing and trialling treatments to support low-milk production mothers in partnership with breastfeeding advocates and clinical stakeholders.
Dr Amy Orben (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St John's College)
Dr Amy Orben will pinpoint how social media use might be linked to mental health risk in teenagers, a time when we are especially susceptible to developing mental health conditions. She will use a range of innovative techniques to study technological designs, such as the quantification of social feedback through ‘like’ counts, that could be problematic and therefore a target for future regulation. As a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, Dr Orben will also collaborate flexibly with youth, policymakers and charities to swiftly address pressing questions about social media and technology, helping to safeguard young people.
Dr Anna Moore (Department of Psychiatry)
Seventy percent of children suffering mental health problems are unable to access services and those who can are waiting longer than ever for help. Working with children, families and Cambridge Children’s Hospital project, Dr Anna Moore is developing easy-to-use digital tools to revolutionise mental health treatment for the young, by helping clinicians diagnose conditions much earlier. The system, called Timely, will use AI to analyse patient data, joining the dots to spot the early signs of mental health conditions. The tool will be designed to reduce health inequality, improve service efficiency and ensure data use is ethical and publicly acceptable.
Dr Niamh Gallagher (Faculty of History and Fellow of St Catharine’s College)
Dr Gallagher will lead ground-breaking historical research into one of the greatest geopolitical transformations of the 20th century, the disappearance of the British Empire, by investigating how Ireland, the Irish and a series of so-called ‘Irish Questions’ influenced the multifarious 'ends' of the Empire, from 1886 to today. With partners spanning education, public policy and the media, this research will produce a series of innovative outputs and shareable recommendations that facilitate pathways to cohesion in post-conflict Northern Ireland and enhance British–Irish relations in the aftermath of Brexit.
Four researchers are among the UK’s “most promising research leaders” who will benefit from £101 million from UKRI to tackle major global issues and commercialise their innovations.
The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.Ottoline Leyser, UKRI Chief ExecutiveAlecia-Jane Twigger, one of the Future Leaders
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge researchers recognised as Future Leaders by UKRI
Future Leaders Fellowships are awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to support universities and businesses in developing their most talented early career researchers and innovators, and to attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.
The 75 “most promising research leaders” recognised today by UKRI will benefit from £101 million to tackle major global issues and to commercialise their innovations in the UK.
UKRI Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, said: “UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training, giving them the freedom to explore adventurous new ideas, and to build dynamic careers that break down the boundaries between sectors and disciplines.
“The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.”
The four Cambridge researchers are:
Dr Alecia-Jane Twigger (Department of Pharmacology)
Breastfeeding has been highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival”. A major priority of the WHO is to increase the global rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months up to at least 50% by 2025. However, many mothers worry about low milk production – a major driver for mothers switching to formula feeding. With funding provided by the Future Leaders Fellowship, Dr Twigger will establish state-of-the-art models of lactation with the aim of developing and trialling treatments to support low-milk production mothers in partnership with breastfeeding advocates and clinical stakeholders.
Dr Amy Orben (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St John's College)
Dr Amy Orben will pinpoint how social media use might be linked to mental health risk in teenagers, a time when we are especially susceptible to developing mental health conditions. She will use a range of innovative techniques to study technological designs, such as the quantification of social feedback through ‘like’ counts, that could be problematic and therefore a target for future regulation. As a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, Dr Orben will also collaborate flexibly with youth, policymakers and charities to swiftly address pressing questions about social media and technology, helping to safeguard young people.
Dr Anna Moore (Department of Psychiatry)
Seventy percent of children suffering mental health problems are unable to access services and those who can are waiting longer than ever for help. Working with children, families and Cambridge Children’s Hospital project, Dr Anna Moore is developing easy-to-use digital tools to revolutionise mental health treatment for the young, by helping clinicians diagnose conditions much earlier. The system, called Timely, will use AI to analyse patient data, joining the dots to spot the early signs of mental health conditions. The tool will be designed to reduce health inequality, improve service efficiency and ensure data use is ethical and publicly acceptable.
Dr Niamh Gallagher (Faculty of History and Fellow of St Catharine’s College)
Dr Gallagher will lead ground-breaking historical research into one of the greatest geopolitical transformations of the 20th century, the disappearance of the British Empire, by investigating how Ireland, the Irish and a series of so-called ‘Irish Questions’ influenced the multifarious 'ends' of the Empire, from 1886 to today. With partners spanning education, public policy and the media, this research will produce a series of innovative outputs and shareable recommendations that facilitate pathways to cohesion in post-conflict Northern Ireland and enhance British–Irish relations in the aftermath of Brexit.
Four researchers are among the UK’s “most promising research leaders” who will benefit from £101 million from UKRI to tackle major global issues and commercialise their innovations.
The fellows announced today illustrate how this scheme empowers talented researchers and innovators to build the diverse and connected research and innovation system we need to shorten the distance between discovery and prosperity across the UK.Ottoline Leyser, UKRI Chief ExecutiveAlecia-Jane Twigger, one of the Future Leaders
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Why reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language
Parents should speak to their babies using sing-song speech, like nursery rhymes, as soon as possible, say researchers. That’s because babies learn languages from rhythmic information, not phonetic information, in their first months.
Phonetic information – the smallest sound elements of speech, typically represented by the alphabet – is considered by many linguists to be the foundation of language. Infants are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case.
Instead, rhythmic speech helps babies learn language by emphasising the boundaries of individual words and is effective even in the first months of life.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year.
Their study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded until seven months old, and was still sparse at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words.
“Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most infants can recognise familiar words like ‘bottle’ by this point,” said Cambridge neuroscientist, Professor Usha Goswami. “From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly – too slowly to form the basis of language.”
The researchers recorded patterns of electrical brain activity in 50 infants at four, seven and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes to an infant. Low frequency bands of brainwaves were fed through a special algorithm, which produced a ‘read out’ of the phonological information that was being encoded.
The researchers found that phonetic encoding in babies emerged gradually over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. d for “daddy”) and nasal sounds (e.g. m for “mummy”), with the ‘read out’ progressively looking more like that of adults
First author, Professor Giovanni Di Liberto, a cognitive and computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin and a researcher at the ADAPT Centre, said: “This is the first evidence we have of how brain activity relates to phonetic information changes over time in response to continuous speech.”
Previously, studies have relied on comparing the responses to nonsense syllables, like “bif” and “bof” instead.
The current study forms part of the BabyRhythm project led by Goswami, which is investigating how language is learnt and how this is related to dyslexia and developmental language disorder.
Goswami believes that it is rhythmic information – the stress or emphasis on different syllables of words and the rise and fall of tone – that is the key to language learning. A sister study, also part of the BabyRhythm project, has shown that rhythmic speech information was processed by babies at two months old – and individual differences predicted later language outcomes. The experiment was also conducted with adults who showed an identical ‘read out’ of rhythm and syllables to babies.
“We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system,” said Goswami. “Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in ‘daddy’ or ‘mummy’, with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech.”
“Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.
Goswami explained that rhythm is a universal aspect of every language all over the world. “In all language that babies are exposed to there is a strong beat structure with a strong syllable twice a second. We’re biologically programmed to emphasise this when speaking to babies.”
Goswami says that there is a long history in trying to explain dyslexia and developmental language disorder in terms of phonetic problems but that the evidence doesn’t add up. She believes that individual differences in children’s language originate with rhythm.
The research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and by Science Foundation Ireland.
Di Liberto et al. Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life, Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x
Researchers find that babies don’t begin to process phonetic information reliably until seven months old which they say is too late to form the foundation of language.
We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system.Professor Usha GoswamiCentre for Neuroscience in Education, University of CambridgeBabies wearing 'head cap' to measure electrical brain activity
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Why reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language
Parents should speak to their babies using sing-song speech, like nursery rhymes, as soon as possible, say researchers. That’s because babies learn languages from rhythmic information, not phonetic information, in their first months.
Phonetic information – the smallest sound elements of speech, typically represented by the alphabet – is considered by many linguists to be the foundation of language. Infants are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case.
Instead, rhythmic speech helps babies learn language by emphasising the boundaries of individual words and is effective even in the first months of life.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year.
Their study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded until seven months old, and was still sparse at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words.
“Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most infants can recognise familiar words like ‘bottle’ by this point,” said Cambridge neuroscientist, Professor Usha Goswami. “From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly – too slowly to form the basis of language.”
The researchers recorded patterns of electrical brain activity in 50 infants at four, seven and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes to an infant. Low frequency bands of brainwaves were fed through a special algorithm, which produced a ‘read out’ of the phonological information that was being encoded.
The researchers found that phonetic encoding in babies emerged gradually over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. d for “daddy”) and nasal sounds (e.g. m for “mummy”), with the ‘read out’ progressively looking more like that of adults
First author, Professor Giovanni Di Liberto, a cognitive and computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin and a researcher at the ADAPT Centre, said: “This is the first evidence we have of how brain activity relates to phonetic information changes over time in response to continuous speech.”
Previously, studies have relied on comparing the responses to nonsense syllables, like “bif” and “bof” instead.
The current study forms part of the BabyRhythm project led by Goswami, which is investigating how language is learnt and how this is related to dyslexia and developmental language disorder.
Goswami believes that it is rhythmic information – the stress or emphasis on different syllables of words and the rise and fall of tone – that is the key to language learning. A sister study, also part of the BabyRhythm project, has shown that rhythmic speech information was processed by babies at two months old – and individual differences predicted later language outcomes. The experiment was also conducted with adults who showed an identical ‘read out’ of rhythm and syllables to babies.
“We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system,” said Goswami. “Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in ‘daddy’ or ‘mummy’, with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech.”
“Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.
Goswami explained that rhythm is a universal aspect of every language all over the world. “In all language that babies are exposed to there is a strong beat structure with a strong syllable twice a second. We’re biologically programmed to emphasise this when speaking to babies.”
Goswami says that there is a long history in trying to explain dyslexia and developmental language disorder in terms of phonetic problems but that the evidence doesn’t add up. She believes that individual differences in children’s language originate with rhythm.
The research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and by Science Foundation Ireland.
Di Liberto et al. Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life, Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x
Researchers find that babies don’t begin to process phonetic information reliably until seven months old which they say is too late to form the foundation of language.
We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system.Professor Usha GoswamiCentre for Neuroscience in Education, University of CambridgeBabies wearing 'head cap' to measure electrical brain activity
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Newborn babies at risk from bacteria commonly carried by mothers
One in 200 newborns is admitted to a neonatal unit with sepsis caused by a bacteria commonly carried by their mothers – much greater than the previous estimate, say Cambridge researchers. The team has developed an ultra-sensitive test capable of better detecting the bacteria, as it is missed in the vast majority of cases.
Streptococcus agalactiae (known as Group B Streptococcus, or GBS) is present in the genital tract in around one in five women. Previous research by the team at the University of Cambridge and Rosie Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, identified GBS in the placenta of around 5% of women prior to the onset of labour. Although it can be treated with antibiotics, unless screened, women will not know they are carriers.
GBS can cause sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to an infection, in the newborn. Worldwide, GBS accounts for around 50,000 stillbirths and as many as 100,000 infant deaths per year.
In a study published today in Nature Microbiology, the team looked at the link between the presence of GBS in the placenta and the risk of admission of the baby to a neonatal unit. The researchers re-analysed data available from their previous study of 436 infants born at term, confirming their findings in a second cohort of 925 pregnancies.
From their analysis, the researchers estimate that placental GBS was associated with a two- to three-fold increased risk of neonatal unit admission, with one in 200 babies admitted with sepsis associated with GBS – almost 10 times the previous estimate. The clinical assessment of these babies using the current diagnostic testing identified GBS in less than one in five of these cases.
In the USA, all pregnant women are routinely screened for GBS and treated with antibiotics if found to be positive. In the UK, women who test positive for GBS are also treated with antibiotics – however, only a minority of pregnant women are tested for GBS, as the approach in the UK is to obtain samples only from women experiencing complications, or with other risk factors.
There are a number of reasons why women in the UK are not screened, including the fact that detecting GBS in the mother is not always straightforward and only a small minority of babies exposed to the bacteria were thought to become ill. A randomised controlled trial of screening for GBS for treatment with antibiotics is currently underway in the UK.
Dr Francesca Gaccioli from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge said: “In the UK, we’ve traditionally not screened mothers for GBS, but our findings – that significantly more newborns are admitted to the neonatal unit as a result of GBS-related sepsis than was previously thought – profoundly changes the risk/benefit balance of universal screening.”
To improve detection, the researchers have developed an ultrasensitive PCR test, which amplifies tiny amounts of DNA or RNA from a suspected sample to check for the presence of GBS. They have filed a patent with Cambridge Enterprise, the University of Cambridge’s technology transfer arm, for this test.
Professor Gordon Smith, Head of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge, said: “Using this new test, we now realise that the clinically detected cases of GBS may represent the tip of the iceberg of complications arising from this infection. We hope that the ultra-sensitive test developed by our team might lead to viable point-of-care testing to inform immediate neonatal care.”
When the researchers analysed serum from the babies’ umbilical cords, they found that over a third showed greatly increased levels of several cytokines – protein messengers release by the immune system. This suggests that a so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – an extreme immune response that causes collateral damage to the host – was behind the increased risk of disease.
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
Reference
Gaccioli, F, Stephens, K & Sovio, U et al. Placental Streptococcus agalactiae DNA is associated with neonatal unit admission and fetal pro-inflammatory cytokines in term infants. Nature Microbiology; 29 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01528-2
One in 200 newborns is admitted to a neonatal unit with sepsis caused by a bacteria commonly carried by their mothers – much greater than the previous estimate, say Cambridge researchers. The team has developed an ultra-sensitive test capable of better detecting the bacteria, as it is missed in the vast majority of cases.
In the UK, we’ve traditionally not screened mothers for GBS, but our findingsprofoundly changes the risk/benefit balance of universal screeningFrancesca GaccioliArteida MjESHTRIPregnant woman holding her stomach
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Newborn babies at risk from bacteria commonly carried by mothers
One in 200 newborns is admitted to a neonatal unit with sepsis caused by a bacteria commonly carried by their mothers – much greater than the previous estimate, say Cambridge researchers. The team has developed an ultra-sensitive test capable of better detecting the bacteria, as it is missed in the vast majority of cases.
Streptococcus agalactiae (known as Group B Streptococcus, or GBS) is present in the genital tract in around one in five women. Previous research by the team at the University of Cambridge and Rosie Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, identified GBS in the placenta of around 5% of women prior to the onset of labour. Although it can be treated with antibiotics, unless screened, women will not know they are carriers.
GBS can cause sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to an infection, in the newborn. Worldwide, GBS accounts for around 50,000 stillbirths and as many as 100,000 infant deaths per year.
In a study published today in Nature Microbiology, the team looked at the link between the presence of GBS in the placenta and the risk of admission of the baby to a neonatal unit. The researchers re-analysed data available from their previous study of 436 infants born at term, confirming their findings in a second cohort of 925 pregnancies.
From their analysis, the researchers estimate that placental GBS was associated with a two- to three-fold increased risk of neonatal unit admission, with one in 200 babies admitted with sepsis associated with GBS – almost 10 times the previous estimate. The clinical assessment of these babies using the current diagnostic testing identified GBS in less than one in five of these cases.
In the USA, all pregnant women are routinely screened for GBS and treated with antibiotics if found to be positive. In the UK, women who test positive for GBS are also treated with antibiotics – however, only a minority of pregnant women are tested for GBS, as the approach in the UK is to obtain samples only from women experiencing complications, or with other risk factors.
There are a number of reasons why women in the UK are not screened, including the fact that detecting GBS in the mother is not always straightforward and only a small minority of babies exposed to the bacteria were thought to become ill. A randomised controlled trial of screening for GBS for treatment with antibiotics is currently underway in the UK.
Dr Francesca Gaccioli from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge said: “In the UK, we’ve traditionally not screened mothers for GBS, but our findings – that significantly more newborns are admitted to the neonatal unit as a result of GBS-related sepsis than was previously thought – profoundly changes the risk/benefit balance of universal screening.”
To improve detection, the researchers have developed an ultrasensitive PCR test, which amplifies tiny amounts of DNA or RNA from a suspected sample to check for the presence of GBS. They have filed a patent with Cambridge Enterprise, the University of Cambridge’s technology transfer arm, for this test.
Professor Gordon Smith, Head of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge, said: “Using this new test, we now realise that the clinically detected cases of GBS may represent the tip of the iceberg of complications arising from this infection. We hope that the ultra-sensitive test developed by our team might lead to viable point-of-care testing to inform immediate neonatal care.”
When the researchers analysed serum from the babies’ umbilical cords, they found that over a third showed greatly increased levels of several cytokines – protein messengers release by the immune system. This suggests that a so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – an extreme immune response that causes collateral damage to the host – was behind the increased risk of disease.
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
Reference
Gaccioli, F, Stephens, K & Sovio, U et al. Placental Streptococcus agalactiae DNA is associated with neonatal unit admission and fetal pro-inflammatory cytokines in term infants. Nature Microbiology; 29 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01528-2
One in 200 newborns is admitted to a neonatal unit with sepsis caused by a bacteria commonly carried by their mothers – much greater than the previous estimate, say Cambridge researchers. The team has developed an ultra-sensitive test capable of better detecting the bacteria, as it is missed in the vast majority of cases.
In the UK, we’ve traditionally not screened mothers for GBS, but our findingsprofoundly changes the risk/benefit balance of universal screeningFrancesca GaccioliArteida MjESHTRIPregnant woman holding her stomach
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Early-stage stem cell therapy trial shows promise for treating progressive MS
The study, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Milan Bicocca and Hospital Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (Italy), is a step towards developing an advanced cell therapy treatment for progressive MS.
Over 2 million people live with MS worldwide, and while treatments exist that can reduce the severity and frequency of relapses, two-thirds of MS patients still transition into a debilitating secondary progressive phase of disease within 25-30 years of diagnosis, where disability grows steadily worse.
In MS, the body’s own immune system attacks and damages myelin, the protective sheath around nerve fibres, causing disruption to messages sent around the brain and spinal cord.
Key immune cells involved in this process are macrophages (literally ‘big eaters’), which ordinarily attack and rid the body of unwanted intruders. A particular type of macrophage known as a microglial cell is found throughout the brain and spinal cord. In progressive forms of MS, they attack the central nervous system (CNS), causing chronic inflammation and damage to nerve cells.
Recent advances have raised expectations that stem cell therapies might help ameliorate this damage. These involve the transplantation of stem cells, the body’s ‘master cells’, which can be programmed to develop into almost any type of cell within the body.
Previous work from the Cambridge team has shown in mice that skin cells re-programmed into brain stem cells, transplanted into the central nervous system, can help reduce inflammation and may be able to help repair damage caused by MS.
Now, in research published in the Cell Stem Cell, scientists have completed a first-in-human, early-stage clinical trial that involved injecting neural stem cells directly into the brains of 15 patients with secondary MS recruited from two hospitals in Italy. The trial was conducted by teams at the University of Cambridge, Milan Bicocca and the Hospitals Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza and S. Maria Terni (IT) and Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (Lugano, Switzerland) and the University of Colorado (USA).
The stem cells were derived from cells taken from brain tissue from a single, miscarried foetal donor. The Italian team had previously shown that it would be possible to produce a virtually limitless supply of these stem cells from a single donor – and in future it may be possible to derive these cells directly from the patient – helping to overcome practical problems associated with the use of allogeneic foetal tissue.
The team followed the patients over 12 months, during which time they observed no treatment-related deaths or serious adverse events. While some side-effects were observed, all were either temporary or reversible.
All the patients showed high levels of disability at the start of the trial – most required a wheelchair, for example – but during the 12 month follow up period none showed any increase in disability or a worsening of symptoms. None of the patients reported symptoms that suggested a relapse and nor did their cognitive function worsen significantly during the study. Overall, say the researchers, this points to a substantial stability of the disease, without signs of progression, though the high levels of disability at the start of the trial make this difficult to confirm.
The researchers assessed a subgroup of patients for changes in the volume of brain tissue associated with disease progression. They found that the larger the dose of injected stem cells, the smaller the reduction in this brain volume over time. They speculate that this may be because the stem cell transplant dampened inflammation.
The team also looked for signs that the stem cells were having a neuroprotective effect – that is, protecting nerve cells from further damage. Their previous work showed how tweaking metabolism – how the body produces energy – can in turn reprogram microglia from ‘bad’ to ‘good’. In this new study, they looked at how the brain's metabolism changes after the treatment. They measured changes in the fluid around the brain and in the blood over time and found certain signs that are linked to how the brain processes fatty acids. These signs were connected to how well the treatment works and how the disease develops. The higher the dose of stem cells, the greater the levels of fatty acids, which also persisted over the 12-month period.
Professor Stefano Pluchino from the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, said: “We desperately need to develop new treatments for secondary progressive MS, and I am cautiously very excited about our findings, which are a step towards developing a cell therapy for treating MS.
“We recognise that our study has limitations – it was only a small study and there may have been confounding effects from the immunosuppressant drugs, for example – but the fact that our treatment was safe and that its effects lasted over the 12 months of the trial means that we can proceed to the next stage of clinical trials.”
Co-leader Professor Angelo Vescovi from the University of Milano-Bicocca said: “It has taken nearly three decades to translate the discovery of brain stem cells into this experimental therapeutic treatment This study will add to the increasing excitement in this field and pave the way to broader efficacy studies, soon to come.”
Caitlin Astbury, Research Communications Manager at the MS Society, says: “This is a really exciting study which builds on previous research funded by us. These results show that special stem cells injected into the brain were safe and well-tolerated by people with secondary progressive MS. They also suggest this treatment approach might even stabilise disability progression. We’ve known for some time that this method has the potential to help protect the brain from progression in MS.
“This was a very small, early-stage study and we need further clinical trials to find out if this treatment has a beneficial effect on the condition. But this is an encouraging step towards a new way of treating some people with MS.”
Reference
Leone, MA, Gelati, M & Profico, DC et al. Intracerebroventricular Transplantation of Foetal Allogeneic Neural Stem Cells in Patients with Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (hNSC-SPMS): a phase I dose escalation clinical trial. Cell Stem Cell; 27 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2023.11.001
An international team has shown that the injection of a type of stem cell into the brains of patients living with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) is safe, well tolerated and has a long-lasting effect that appears to protect the brain from further damage.
I am cautiously very excited about our findings, which are a step towards developing a cell therapy for treating MSStefano Pluchino Early-stage stem cell therapy trial shows promise for treating progressive MS eyecrave productions (Getty Images)Mature Adult Female with Disability
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Early-stage stem cell therapy trial shows promise for treating progressive MS
The study, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Milan Bicocca and Hospital Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (Italy), is a step towards developing an advanced cell therapy treatment for progressive MS.
Over 2 million people live with MS worldwide, and while treatments exist that can reduce the severity and frequency of relapses, two-thirds of MS patients still transition into a debilitating secondary progressive phase of disease within 25-30 years of diagnosis, where disability grows steadily worse.
In MS, the body’s own immune system attacks and damages myelin, the protective sheath around nerve fibres, causing disruption to messages sent around the brain and spinal cord.
Key immune cells involved in this process are macrophages (literally ‘big eaters’), which ordinarily attack and rid the body of unwanted intruders. A particular type of macrophage known as a microglial cell is found throughout the brain and spinal cord. In progressive forms of MS, they attack the central nervous system (CNS), causing chronic inflammation and damage to nerve cells.
Recent advances have raised expectations that stem cell therapies might help ameliorate this damage. These involve the transplantation of stem cells, the body’s ‘master cells’, which can be programmed to develop into almost any type of cell within the body.
Previous work from the Cambridge team has shown in mice that skin cells re-programmed into brain stem cells, transplanted into the central nervous system, can help reduce inflammation and may be able to help repair damage caused by MS.
Now, in research published in the Cell Stem Cell, scientists have completed a first-in-human, early-stage clinical trial that involved injecting neural stem cells directly into the brains of 15 patients with secondary MS recruited from two hospitals in Italy. The trial was conducted by teams at the University of Cambridge, Milan Bicocca and the Hospitals Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza and S. Maria Terni (IT) and Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (Lugano, Switzerland) and the University of Colorado (USA).
The stem cells were derived from cells taken from brain tissue from a single, miscarried foetal donor. The Italian team had previously shown that it would be possible to produce a virtually limitless supply of these stem cells from a single donor – and in future it may be possible to derive these cells directly from the patient – helping to overcome practical problems associated with the use of allogeneic foetal tissue.
The team followed the patients over 12 months, during which time they observed no treatment-related deaths or serious adverse events. While some side-effects were observed, all were either temporary or reversible.
All the patients showed high levels of disability at the start of the trial – most required a wheelchair, for example – but during the 12 month follow up period none showed any increase in disability or a worsening of symptoms. None of the patients reported symptoms that suggested a relapse and nor did their cognitive function worsen significantly during the study. Overall, say the researchers, this points to a substantial stability of the disease, without signs of progression, though the high levels of disability at the start of the trial make this difficult to confirm.
The researchers assessed a subgroup of patients for changes in the volume of brain tissue associated with disease progression. They found that the larger the dose of injected stem cells, the smaller the reduction in this brain volume over time. They speculate that this may be because the stem cell transplant dampened inflammation.
The team also looked for signs that the stem cells were having a neuroprotective effect – that is, protecting nerve cells from further damage. Their previous work showed how tweaking metabolism – how the body produces energy – can in turn reprogram microglia from ‘bad’ to ‘good’. In this new study, they looked at how the brain's metabolism changes after the treatment. They measured changes in the fluid around the brain and in the blood over time and found certain signs that are linked to how the brain processes fatty acids. These signs were connected to how well the treatment works and how the disease develops. The higher the dose of stem cells, the greater the levels of fatty acids, which also persisted over the 12-month period.
Professor Stefano Pluchino from the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, said: “We desperately need to develop new treatments for secondary progressive MS, and I am cautiously very excited about our findings, which are a step towards developing a cell therapy for treating MS.
“We recognise that our study has limitations – it was only a small study and there may have been confounding effects from the immunosuppressant drugs, for example – but the fact that our treatment was safe and that its effects lasted over the 12 months of the trial means that we can proceed to the next stage of clinical trials.”
Co-leader Professor Angelo Vescovi from the University of Milano-Bicocca said: “It has taken nearly three decades to translate the discovery of brain stem cells into this experimental therapeutic treatment This study will add to the increasing excitement in this field and pave the way to broader efficacy studies, soon to come.”
Caitlin Astbury, Research Communications Manager at the MS Society, says: “This is a really exciting study which builds on previous research funded by us. These results show that special stem cells injected into the brain were safe and well-tolerated by people with secondary progressive MS. They also suggest this treatment approach might even stabilise disability progression. We’ve known for some time that this method has the potential to help protect the brain from progression in MS.
“This was a very small, early-stage study and we need further clinical trials to find out if this treatment has a beneficial effect on the condition. But this is an encouraging step towards a new way of treating some people with MS.”
Reference
Leone, MA, Gelati, M & Profico, DC et al. Intracerebroventricular Transplantation of Foetal Allogeneic Neural Stem Cells in Patients with Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (hNSC-SPMS): a phase I dose escalation clinical trial. Cell Stem Cell; 27 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2023.11.001
An international team has shown that the injection of a type of stem cell into the brains of patients living with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) is safe, well tolerated and has a long-lasting effect that appears to protect the brain from further damage.
I am cautiously very excited about our findings, which are a step towards developing a cell therapy for treating MSStefano Pluchino Early-stage stem cell therapy trial shows promise for treating progressive MS eyecrave productions (Getty Images)Mature Adult Female with Disability
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge partners with AstraZeneca and Medical Research Council on new world-class functional genomics laboratory
The University of Cambridge today announced a partnership with AstraZeneca and the Medical Research Council (MRC) to establish a new state-of-the-art functional genomics laboratory at the Milner Therapeutics Institute (MTI). The laboratory will become part of the UK’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative, contributing to the UK’s ambition of having the most advanced genomic healthcare system in the world.
Functional genomics investigates the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, and particularly how these contribute to disease. CRISPR makes it possible to test specific DNA alterations in a controlled way to investigate the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, revealing their effects on biological processes that cause disease. Finding these disease drivers is a key first step in the process of identifying potentially life-changing medicines for patients.
The new facility, which will be located within the MTI on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, will provide researchers from across the UK with access to large-scale biological and technological tools and house an advanced automated arrayed-CRISPR screening platform. It is hoped that through the use of tools, such as CRISPR gene editing to provide insights into the relationship between genes and disease, scientists will discover new opportunities to develop therapies for chronic diseases including cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic disease.
Professor Tony Kouzarides, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, said: “The best science is founded on collaboration, and I am delighted that the Milner Therapeutics Institute is partnering with the MRC and AstraZeneca to launch this unique functional genomics laboratory. This will enable sharing of expertise and resources to deliver new diagnostics and treatments for people with chronic diseases.”
Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge, said: “This new collaboration with AstraZeneca and MRC is a fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.”
Dr Jonathan Pearce, Director of Strategy and Planning, MRC, said: “We are working across UK Research and Innovation to improve health, ageing and wellbeing. Our investment in this new laboratory builds on the UK’s global leadership in genomics. Our support will enable the laboratory’s launch and provide access for researchers from across the UK. Through this investment, and the wider Human Functional Genomics Initiative, we will enhance the national ecosystem needed to improve our understanding of how genetic variance impacts health and disease.”
Sharon Barr, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “Collaboration is crucial to achieving our ambition of transforming healthcare and delivering life-changing medicines for patients, and innovative partnership such as this one, allow us to share resources and expertise to advance science. This new laboratory created as part of the Human Functional Genomics Initiative, will be world-leading and will play a central role in shaping future functional genomics work across the UK and beyond.”
The lab, which is expected to become operational in 2024, will provide a centre of excellence and national resource that combines the strengths and expertise of academia and industry. Its creation is part of a new partnership formed between MTI, AstraZeneca and MRC, and builds upon expertise gained through an existing collaboration between MTI, AstraZeneca and Cancer Research Horizons, known as the AstraZeneca-Cancer Research Horizons Functional Genomics Centre (FGC) that has been enabling advances in oncology research since 2018. The FGC is currently housed in the MTI and will be relocating next year.
MTI, AstraZeneca and the MRC’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative will share facilities, resources and knowledge working closely together to facilitate faster progress and innovations.
The facility, based at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, will support the discovery of new medicines and diagnostics for chronic diseases by applying advanced biological and technological tools, including CRISPR gene editing.
A fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.Andy NeelyMilner Therapeutics InstituteScientist looking down microscope
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Cambridge partners with AstraZeneca and Medical Research Council on new world-class functional genomics laboratory
The University of Cambridge today announced a partnership with AstraZeneca and the Medical Research Council (MRC) to establish a new state-of-the-art functional genomics laboratory at the Milner Therapeutics Institute (MTI). The laboratory will become part of the UK’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative, contributing to the UK’s ambition of having the most advanced genomic healthcare system in the world.
Functional genomics investigates the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, and particularly how these contribute to disease. CRISPR makes it possible to test specific DNA alterations in a controlled way to investigate the effects and impacts of genetic changes in our DNA, revealing their effects on biological processes that cause disease. Finding these disease drivers is a key first step in the process of identifying potentially life-changing medicines for patients.
The new facility, which will be located within the MTI on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, will provide researchers from across the UK with access to large-scale biological and technological tools and house an advanced automated arrayed-CRISPR screening platform. It is hoped that through the use of tools, such as CRISPR gene editing to provide insights into the relationship between genes and disease, scientists will discover new opportunities to develop therapies for chronic diseases including cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic disease.
Professor Tony Kouzarides, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, said: “The best science is founded on collaboration, and I am delighted that the Milner Therapeutics Institute is partnering with the MRC and AstraZeneca to launch this unique functional genomics laboratory. This will enable sharing of expertise and resources to deliver new diagnostics and treatments for people with chronic diseases.”
Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge, said: “This new collaboration with AstraZeneca and MRC is a fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.”
Dr Jonathan Pearce, Director of Strategy and Planning, MRC, said: “We are working across UK Research and Innovation to improve health, ageing and wellbeing. Our investment in this new laboratory builds on the UK’s global leadership in genomics. Our support will enable the laboratory’s launch and provide access for researchers from across the UK. Through this investment, and the wider Human Functional Genomics Initiative, we will enhance the national ecosystem needed to improve our understanding of how genetic variance impacts health and disease.”
Sharon Barr, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “Collaboration is crucial to achieving our ambition of transforming healthcare and delivering life-changing medicines for patients, and innovative partnership such as this one, allow us to share resources and expertise to advance science. This new laboratory created as part of the Human Functional Genomics Initiative, will be world-leading and will play a central role in shaping future functional genomics work across the UK and beyond.”
The lab, which is expected to become operational in 2024, will provide a centre of excellence and national resource that combines the strengths and expertise of academia and industry. Its creation is part of a new partnership formed between MTI, AstraZeneca and MRC, and builds upon expertise gained through an existing collaboration between MTI, AstraZeneca and Cancer Research Horizons, known as the AstraZeneca-Cancer Research Horizons Functional Genomics Centre (FGC) that has been enabling advances in oncology research since 2018. The FGC is currently housed in the MTI and will be relocating next year.
MTI, AstraZeneca and the MRC’s Human Functional Genomics Initiative will share facilities, resources and knowledge working closely together to facilitate faster progress and innovations.
The facility, based at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, will support the discovery of new medicines and diagnostics for chronic diseases by applying advanced biological and technological tools, including CRISPR gene editing.
A fantastic example of industry and academia working together to drive forward science that will have a real impact on people’s health in the UK and around the world.Andy NeelyMilner Therapeutics InstituteScientist looking down microscope
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Four Cambridge researchers awarded consolidator grants from the European Research Council
The grants are part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. They are given to excellent scientists and scholars at the career stage to support them to pursue their most promising scientific ideas.
Cambridge scientists, Professor Chiara Ciccarelli, Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara, Professor Jason Miller, and Dr Jenny Zhang have been named as awardees of ERC consolidator grants.
Professor Chiara Ciccarelli
Chiara Ciccarelli is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at the Department of Physics. She is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a Fellow and Director of Studies at St Catharine's College. She said: “Our group studies magnets and seeks ways to write and read their magnetic state as fast and as energy-efficiently as possible. This is because magnets remain the best way, that we know of, to store digital data for a long time.
“Our ERC project, PICaSSO, explores new ways to ‘write’ magnets at low temperature by interfacing them with superconductors. Although this research is still at an early stage, it would allow the development of ultra-energy-efficient cryogenic memories, a necessary requirement for the realistic scaling of quantum computers.
“I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded a consolidator grant. It is an incredible opportunity to do great science and an important recognition of the work of my amazing team.”
Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara
Rosana Collepardo-Guevara is Professor of Computational and Molecular Biophysics at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and the Department of Genetics. She is a Winton Advanced Research Fellow in physics, a director of postgraduate education for chemistry and a Fellow of Clare College. She said: “My group investigates the connection between genome structure and function by developing computer models and algorithms that can bridge scales, from atoms to genes, while considering the extensive chemical diversity of the genome.
“We will investigate the transformative hypothesis of phase transitions in genome organisation, which suggests that our genes are organised inside functionally diverse liquid drops. We will develop new computer models to probe how the physical properties of these droplets are regulated, and how this may contribute to the tight regulation of our genes.
“I am truly delighted and proud of my team. This success is owed to the exceptional students and postdocs that I’ve had the privilege to supervise over the years, and also to the support of my mentors, collaborators, and family. This grant will give us the opportunity to keep exploring radical ideas.”
Professor Jason Miller
Jason Miller is a professor in the Statistics Laboratory and a Fellow of Trinity College. He said: “My research is at the interface of probability theory with complex analysis, combinatorics, and geometry. The questions I study arise from models in statistical physics which are exactly at a critical point between a phase transition.
“My ERC project will be investigating critical random media in two dimensions, including models of how fluid flows through a porous medium and how the spins organise themselves in a magnet. The focus will be the study of their fractal structure and diffusion properties.
“I am very pleased to have received the grant. With the support that it provides, I will be able to form a research group to tackle longstanding questions in the area.”
Dr Jenny Zhang
Dr Jenny Zhang is a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellow at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. She is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. She said: “My team focuses on creating toolsets for rewiring the electrochemical pathways associated with living systems, particularly photosynthetic organisms. We do this to better understand fundamental bioenergetics and to manipulate them for various applications, such as in renewable energy generation.
“This ERC project develops an exciting new approach for accelerating the creation of synergistic interactions between biological and non-biological materials for highly efficient and robust energy exchange. The ultimate aim is to generate high performing biohybrid materials for clean energy generation.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be awarded this unique grant, which recognises all the key ingredients needed for innovation. This wonderful result was a cumulation of a lot of hard work, but also the generous support of my wonderful team and colleagues. I could not be more grateful for both the grant and the people I get to work with.”
Scientists at UK institutions have won the second greatest number of grants in Europe. Across Europe, the number of women receiving grants has increased for the third year running.
“I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the brilliant researchers who have been selected for ERC Consolidator Grants,” said Iliana Ivanova, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. “I'm especially thrilled to note the significant increase in the representation of women among the winners for the third consecutive year in this prestigious grant competition. This positive trend not only reflects the outstanding contributions of women researchers but also highlights the strides we are making towards a more inclusive and diverse scientific community.”
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded grants worth a total of €627 million to 308 researchers across Europe, of whom four are at the University of Cambridge.
This grant will give us the opportunity to keep exploring radical ideas.Professor Rosana Collepardo-GuevaraJenny Zhang - Nathan Pitt, University of CambridgeLeft to right: Professor Chiara Ciccarelli, Professor Jason Miller, Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara, and Dr Jenny Zhang
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Four Cambridge researchers awarded consolidator grants from the European Research Council
The grants are part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. They are given to excellent scientists and scholars at the career stage to support them to pursue their most promising scientific ideas.
Cambridge scientists, Professor Chiara Ciccarelli, Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara, Professor Jason Miller, and Dr Jenny Zhang have been named as awardees of ERC consolidator grants.
Professor Chiara Ciccarelli
Chiara Ciccarelli is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at the Department of Physics. She is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a Fellow and Director of Studies at St Catharine's College. She said: “Our group studies magnets and seeks ways to write and read their magnetic state as fast and as energy-efficiently as possible. This is because magnets remain the best way, that we know of, to store digital data for a long time.
“Our ERC project, PICaSSO, explores new ways to ‘write’ magnets at low temperature by interfacing them with superconductors. Although this research is still at an early stage, it would allow the development of ultra-energy-efficient cryogenic memories, a necessary requirement for the realistic scaling of quantum computers.
“I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded a consolidator grant. It is an incredible opportunity to do great science and an important recognition of the work of my amazing team.”
Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara
Rosana Collepardo-Guevara is Professor of Computational and Molecular Biophysics at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and the Department of Genetics. She is a Winton Advanced Research Fellow in physics, a director of postgraduate education for chemistry and a Fellow of Clare College. She said: “My group investigates the connection between genome structure and function by developing computer models and algorithms that can bridge scales, from atoms to genes, while considering the extensive chemical diversity of the genome.
“We will investigate the transformative hypothesis of phase transitions in genome organisation, which suggests that our genes are organised inside functionally diverse liquid drops. We will develop new computer models to probe how the physical properties of these droplets are regulated, and how this may contribute to the tight regulation of our genes.
“I am truly delighted and proud of my team. This success is owed to the exceptional students and postdocs that I’ve had the privilege to supervise over the years, and also to the support of my mentors, collaborators, and family. This grant will give us the opportunity to keep exploring radical ideas.”
Professor Jason Miller
Jason Miller is a professor in the Statistics Laboratory and a Fellow of Trinity College. He said: “My research is at the interface of probability theory with complex analysis, combinatorics, and geometry. The questions I study arise from models in statistical physics which are exactly at a critical point between a phase transition.
“My ERC project will be investigating critical random media in two dimensions, including models of how fluid flows through a porous medium and how the spins organise themselves in a magnet. The focus will be the study of their fractal structure and diffusion properties.
“I am very pleased to have received the grant. With the support that it provides, I will be able to form a research group to tackle longstanding questions in the area.”
Dr Jenny Zhang
Dr Jenny Zhang is a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellow at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. She is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. She said: “My team focuses on creating toolsets for rewiring the electrochemical pathways associated with living systems, particularly photosynthetic organisms. We do this to better understand fundamental bioenergetics and to manipulate them for various applications, such as in renewable energy generation.
“This ERC project develops an exciting new approach for accelerating the creation of synergistic interactions between biological and non-biological materials for highly efficient and robust energy exchange. The ultimate aim is to generate high performing biohybrid materials for clean energy generation.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be awarded this unique grant, which recognises all the key ingredients needed for innovation. This wonderful result was a cumulation of a lot of hard work, but also the generous support of my wonderful team and colleagues. I could not be more grateful for both the grant and the people I get to work with.”
Scientists at UK institutions have won the second greatest number of grants in Europe. Across Europe, the number of women receiving grants has increased for the third year running.
“I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the brilliant researchers who have been selected for ERC Consolidator Grants,” said Iliana Ivanova, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. “I'm especially thrilled to note the significant increase in the representation of women among the winners for the third consecutive year in this prestigious grant competition. This positive trend not only reflects the outstanding contributions of women researchers but also highlights the strides we are making towards a more inclusive and diverse scientific community.”
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded grants worth a total of €627 million to 308 researchers across Europe, of whom four are at the University of Cambridge.
This grant will give us the opportunity to keep exploring radical ideas.Professor Rosana Collepardo-GuevaraJenny Zhang - Nathan Pitt, University of CambridgeLeft to right: Professor Chiara Ciccarelli, Professor Jason Miller, Professor Rosana Collepardo-Guevara, and Dr Jenny Zhang
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
New report highlights increase in number of children and young people with eating disorders
The report is a follow on from the 2017 survey, which six years ago reported an upswing in anxiety, depression and self-harm among young women.
Professor Tamsin Ford, Head of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and one of the research leads for the new Cambridge Children’s Hospital, was one of the report’s authors. She said: “These figures confirm that the huge increase in referrals to clinics for eating disorder services is not just the result of more children and young people seeking help, it’s a sign of more children and young people needing help. There is no single silver bullet to fixing this problem. All services working with children must pull together.”
Among other key findings were:
- After a rise in prevalence between 2017 and 2020, rates of probable mental disorder remained stable in all age groups between 2022 and 2023.
- Among 8 to 16 year olds, rates of probable mental disorder were similar for boys and girls, while for 17 to 25 year olds, rates were twice as high for young women than young men.
- More than 1 in 4 children aged 8 to 16 years (26.8%) with a probable mental disorder had a parent who could not afford for their child to take part in activities outside school or college, compared with 1 in 10 (10.3%) of those unlikely to have a mental disorder.
- 17 to 25 year olds with a probable mental disorder were 3 times more likely to not be able to afford to take part in activities such as sports, days out, or socialising with friends, compared with those unlikely to have a mental disorder (26.1% compared with 8.3%).
- Children aged 11 to 16 years with a probable mental disorder were 5 times more likely than those unlikely to have a mental disorder to have been bullied in person (36.9% compared with 7.6%). They were also more likely to have been bullied online (10.8% compared with 2.6%).
While not every young person with an eating disorder will require inpatient care, for those that do Professor Ford says Cambridge Children’s Hospital, with its vision of integrated mental and physical healthcare will vastly improve treatment and outcomes.
“These are conditions to be taken very seriously. The benefit of having integrated paediatric physical and mental healthcare for children and young people diagnosed with eating disorders is huge,” said Professor Ford.
“If your condition is that severe, you need access to blood tests and the acute medical care that being on an inpatient acute paediatric ward gives you, but at the same time you need the therapeutic environment and support that you would get in a mental health ward.
“What Cambridge Children's Hospital will do is provide both in the same place as opposed to children having to be transferred between locations and only being able to access one part of their care that they need at any one time.”
As the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, Cambridge Children’s Hospital will care for children, young people and their families from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. Every child will be treated for their mental and physical health, with an additional focus on family wellbeing and support.
Professor Ford said mental health problems in the teenage and emerging adult years can massively impact a young person’s future trajectory in terms of education, health, employment, and social skills. She believes Cambridge Children’s Hospital vision of integrated care will help children and young people recover more quickly.
“What we hope is that treating mental and physical health together – a ‘whole child’ approach - will allow us to get children better quicker and get them back to their homes and back attending school, which again will help their ongoing recovery. Children should be in hospital for the shortest possible time.”
It was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and Department of Education, commissioned by NHS England, and carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, the Office for National Statistics and the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter.
Living with an eating disorderSummer*, who was diagnosed with an eating disorder during her teens, was cared for in the community before being admitted to an inpatient ward. She says being able to have a clinician treat you from your bedside, rather than being transferred to a hospital, could make a huge difference.
“The physical consequences [of eating disorders] can be huge,” said Summer, who grew up in Essex. “Your vital signs can get dangerously low and long term you can get difficulties, like osteoporosis.
“Self-harming can be quite common in some mental health units and the need to leave for treatment somewhere else can be traumatising for the young person being moved and the other patients who might witness it.”
Summer, who says challenges at home as well as pressure from social media contributed to her becoming ill, added: “It can be a shock being admitted as an inpatient, particularly if you feel you're still functioning well in school or work. It can be difficult to recognise how sick you are.”
*Summer’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
Adapted from a news story from the Cambridge Children’s Hospital
One in five children and young people have a probable mental health condition, according to The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2023 report, published today. The report also reveals a significant rise in those being diagnosed with eating disorders, including a 10% increase among young men and women aged 17-19.
[It's] not just the result of more children and young people seeking help, it’s a sign of more children and young people needing helpTamsin FordKate Williams A woman looking out of a window
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
New report highlights increase in number of children and young people with eating disorders
The report is a follow on from the 2017 survey, which six years ago reported an upswing in anxiety, depression and self-harm among young women.
Professor Tamsin Ford, Head of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and one of the research leads for the new Cambridge Children’s Hospital, was one of the report’s authors. She said: “These figures confirm that the huge increase in referrals to clinics for eating disorder services is not just the result of more children and young people seeking help, it’s a sign of more children and young people needing help. There is no single silver bullet to fixing this problem. All services working with children must pull together.”
Among other key findings were:
- After a rise in prevalence between 2017 and 2020, rates of probable mental disorder remained stable in all age groups between 2022 and 2023.
- Among 8 to 16 year olds, rates of probable mental disorder were similar for boys and girls, while for 17 to 25 year olds, rates were twice as high for young women than young men.
- More than 1 in 4 children aged 8 to 16 years (26.8%) with a probable mental disorder had a parent who could not afford for their child to take part in activities outside school or college, compared with 1 in 10 (10.3%) of those unlikely to have a mental disorder.
- 17 to 25 year olds with a probable mental disorder were 3 times more likely to not be able to afford to take part in activities such as sports, days out, or socialising with friends, compared with those unlikely to have a mental disorder (26.1% compared with 8.3%).
- Children aged 11 to 16 years with a probable mental disorder were 5 times more likely than those unlikely to have a mental disorder to have been bullied in person (36.9% compared with 7.6%). They were also more likely to have been bullied online (10.8% compared with 2.6%).
While not every young person with an eating disorder will require inpatient care, for those that do Professor Ford says Cambridge Children’s Hospital, with its vision of integrated mental and physical healthcare will vastly improve treatment and outcomes.
“These are conditions to be taken very seriously. The benefit of having integrated paediatric physical and mental healthcare for children and young people diagnosed with eating disorders is huge,” said Professor Ford.
“If your condition is that severe, you need access to blood tests and the acute medical care that being on an inpatient acute paediatric ward gives you, but at the same time you need the therapeutic environment and support that you would get in a mental health ward.
“What Cambridge Children's Hospital will do is provide both in the same place as opposed to children having to be transferred between locations and only being able to access one part of their care that they need at any one time.”
As the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, Cambridge Children’s Hospital will care for children, young people and their families from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. Every child will be treated for their mental and physical health, with an additional focus on family wellbeing and support.
Professor Ford said mental health problems in the teenage and emerging adult years can massively impact a young person’s future trajectory in terms of education, health, employment, and social skills. She believes Cambridge Children’s Hospital vision of integrated care will help children and young people recover more quickly.
“What we hope is that treating mental and physical health together – a ‘whole child’ approach - will allow us to get children better quicker and get them back to their homes and back attending school, which again will help their ongoing recovery. Children should be in hospital for the shortest possible time.”
It was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and Department of Education, commissioned by NHS England, and carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, the Office for National Statistics and the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter.
Living with an eating disorderSummer*, who was diagnosed with an eating disorder during her teens, was cared for in the community before being admitted to an inpatient ward. She says being able to have a clinician treat you from your bedside, rather than being transferred to a hospital, could make a huge difference.
“The physical consequences [of eating disorders] can be huge,” said Summer, who grew up in Essex. “Your vital signs can get dangerously low and long term you can get difficulties, like osteoporosis.
“Self-harming can be quite common in some mental health units and the need to leave for treatment somewhere else can be traumatising for the young person being moved and the other patients who might witness it.”
Summer, who says challenges at home as well as pressure from social media contributed to her becoming ill, added: “It can be a shock being admitted as an inpatient, particularly if you feel you're still functioning well in school or work. It can be difficult to recognise how sick you are.”
*Summer’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
Adapted from a news story from the Cambridge Children’s Hospital
One in five children and young people have a probable mental health condition, according to The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2023 report, published today. The report also reveals a significant rise in those being diagnosed with eating disorders, including a 10% increase among young men and women aged 17-19.
[It's] not just the result of more children and young people seeking help, it’s a sign of more children and young people needing helpTamsin FordKate Williams A woman looking out of a window
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Our brains are not able to ‘rewire’ themselves, despite what most scientists believe, new study argues
Writing in eLife, Professors Tamar Makin (Cambridge) and John Krakauer (Johns Hopkins) argue that the notion that the brain, in response to injury or deficit, can reorganise itself and repurpose particular regions for new functions, is fundamentally flawed – despite being commonly cited in scientific textbooks. Instead, they argue that what is occurring is merely the brain being trained to utilise already existing, but latent, abilities.
One of the most common examples given is where a person loses their sight – or is born blind – and the visual cortex, previously specialised in processing vision, is rewired to process sounds, allowing the individual to use a form of ‘echolocation’ to navigate a cluttered room. Another common example is of people who have had a stroke and are initially unable to move their limbs repurposing other areas of the brain to allow them to regain control.
Krakauer, Director of the Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair at Johns Hopkins University, said: “The idea that our brain has an amazing ability to rewire and reorganise itself is an appealing one. It gives us hope and fascination, especially when we hear extraordinary stories of blind individuals developing almost superhuman echolocation abilities, for example, or stroke survivors miraculously regaining motor abilities they thought they’d lost.
“This idea goes beyond simple adaptation, or plasticity – it implies a wholesale repurposing of brain regions. But while these stories may well be true, the explanation of what is happening is, in fact, wrong.”
In their article, Makin and Krakauer look at a ten seminal studies that purport to show the brain’s ability to reorganise. They argue, however, that while the studies do indeed show the brain’s ability to adapt to change, it is not creating new functions in previously unrelated areas – instead it's utilising latent capacities that have been present since birth.
For example, one of the studies – research carried out in the 1980s by Professor Michael Merzenich at University of California, San Francisco – looked at what happens when a hand loses a finger. The hand has a particular representation in the brain, with each finger appearing to map onto a specific brain region. Remove the forefinger, and the area of the brain previously allocated to this finger is reallocated to processing signals from neighbouring fingers, argued Merzenich – in other words, the brain has rewired itself in response to changes in sensory input.
Not so, says Makin, whose own research provides an alternative explanation.
In a study published in 2022, Makin used a nerve blocker to temporarily mimic the effect of amputation of the forefinger in her subjects. She showed that even before amputation, signals from neighbouring fingers mapped onto the brain region ‘responsible’ for the forefinger – in other words, while this brain region may have been primarily responsible for process signals from the forefinger, it was not exclusively so. All that happens following amputation is that existing signals from the other fingers are ‘dialled up’ in this brain region.
Makin, from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “The brain's ability to adapt to injury isn’t about commandeering new brain regions for entirely different purposes. These regions don’t start processing entirely new types of information. Information about the other fingers was available in the examined brain area even before the amputation, it’s just that in the original studies, the researchers didn’t pay much notice to it because it was weaker than for the finger about to be amputated.”
Another compelling counterexample to the reorganisation argument is seen in a study of congenitally deaf cats, whose auditory cortex – the area of the brain that processes sound – appears to be repurposed to process vision. But when they are fitted with a cochlear implant, this brain region immediately begins processing sound once again, suggesting that the brain had not, in fact, rewired.
Examining other studies, Makin and Krakauer found no compelling evidence that the visual cortex of individuals that were born blind or the uninjured cortex of stroke survivors ever developed a novel functional ability that did not otherwise exist.
Makin and Krakauer do not dismiss the stories of blind people being able to navigate purely based on hearing, or individuals who have experienced a stroke regain their motor functions, for example. They argue instead that rather than completely repurposing regions for new tasks, the brain is enhancing or modifying its pre-existing architecture – and it is doing this through repetition and learning.
Understanding the true nature and limits of brain plasticity is crucial, both for setting realistic expectations for patients and for guiding clinical practitioners in their rehabilitative approaches, they argue.
Makin added: “This learning process is a testament to the brain's remarkable – but constrained –capacity for plasticity. There are no shortcuts or fast tracks in this journey. The idea of quickly unlocking hidden brain potentials or tapping into vast unused reserves is more wishful thinking than reality. It's a slow, incremental journey, demanding persistent effort and practice. Recognising this helps us appreciate the hard work behind every story of recovery and adapt our strategies accordingly.
“So many times, the brain’s ability to rewire has been described as ‘miraculous’ – but we’re scientists, we don’t believe in magic. These amazing behaviours that we see are rooted in hard work, repetition and training, not the magical reassignment of the brain’s resources.”
Reference
Makin, TR & Krakauer, JW. Against Cortical Reorganisation. eLife; 21 Nov 2023; DOI: doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84716
Contrary to the commonly-held view, the brain does not have the ability to rewire itself to compensate for the loss of sight, an amputation or stroke, for example, say scientists from the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University.
So many times, the brain’s ability to rewire has been described as ‘miraculous’ – but we’re scientists, we don’t believe in magicTamar MakinGDJ`Graphic representing brain circuits
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Our brains are not able to ‘rewire’ themselves, despite what most scientists believe, new study argues
Writing in eLife, Professors Tamar Makin (Cambridge) and John Krakauer (Johns Hopkins) argue that the notion that the brain, in response to injury or deficit, can reorganise itself and repurpose particular regions for new functions, is fundamentally flawed – despite being commonly cited in scientific textbooks. Instead, they argue that what is occurring is merely the brain being trained to utilise already existing, but latent, abilities.
One of the most common examples given is where a person loses their sight – or is born blind – and the visual cortex, previously specialised in processing vision, is rewired to process sounds, allowing the individual to use a form of ‘echolocation’ to navigate a cluttered room. Another common example is of people who have had a stroke and are initially unable to move their limbs repurposing other areas of the brain to allow them to regain control.
Krakauer, Director of the Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair at Johns Hopkins University, said: “The idea that our brain has an amazing ability to rewire and reorganise itself is an appealing one. It gives us hope and fascination, especially when we hear extraordinary stories of blind individuals developing almost superhuman echolocation abilities, for example, or stroke survivors miraculously regaining motor abilities they thought they’d lost.
“This idea goes beyond simple adaptation, or plasticity – it implies a wholesale repurposing of brain regions. But while these stories may well be true, the explanation of what is happening is, in fact, wrong.”
In their article, Makin and Krakauer look at a ten seminal studies that purport to show the brain’s ability to reorganise. They argue, however, that while the studies do indeed show the brain’s ability to adapt to change, it is not creating new functions in previously unrelated areas – instead it's utilising latent capacities that have been present since birth.
For example, one of the studies – research carried out in the 1980s by Professor Michael Merzenich at University of California, San Francisco – looked at what happens when a hand loses a finger. The hand has a particular representation in the brain, with each finger appearing to map onto a specific brain region. Remove the forefinger, and the area of the brain previously allocated to this finger is reallocated to processing signals from neighbouring fingers, argued Merzenich – in other words, the brain has rewired itself in response to changes in sensory input.
Not so, says Makin, whose own research provides an alternative explanation.
In a study published in 2022, Makin used a nerve blocker to temporarily mimic the effect of amputation of the forefinger in her subjects. She showed that even before amputation, signals from neighbouring fingers mapped onto the brain region ‘responsible’ for the forefinger – in other words, while this brain region may have been primarily responsible for process signals from the forefinger, it was not exclusively so. All that happens following amputation is that existing signals from the other fingers are ‘dialled up’ in this brain region.
Makin, from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “The brain's ability to adapt to injury isn’t about commandeering new brain regions for entirely different purposes. These regions don’t start processing entirely new types of information. Information about the other fingers was available in the examined brain area even before the amputation, it’s just that in the original studies, the researchers didn’t pay much notice to it because it was weaker than for the finger about to be amputated.”
Another compelling counterexample to the reorganisation argument is seen in a study of congenitally deaf cats, whose auditory cortex – the area of the brain that processes sound – appears to be repurposed to process vision. But when they are fitted with a cochlear implant, this brain region immediately begins processing sound once again, suggesting that the brain had not, in fact, rewired.
Examining other studies, Makin and Krakauer found no compelling evidence that the visual cortex of individuals that were born blind or the uninjured cortex of stroke survivors ever developed a novel functional ability that did not otherwise exist.
Makin and Krakauer do not dismiss the stories of blind people being able to navigate purely based on hearing, or individuals who have experienced a stroke regain their motor functions, for example. They argue instead that rather than completely repurposing regions for new tasks, the brain is enhancing or modifying its pre-existing architecture – and it is doing this through repetition and learning.
Understanding the true nature and limits of brain plasticity is crucial, both for setting realistic expectations for patients and for guiding clinical practitioners in their rehabilitative approaches, they argue.
Makin added: “This learning process is a testament to the brain's remarkable – but constrained –capacity for plasticity. There are no shortcuts or fast tracks in this journey. The idea of quickly unlocking hidden brain potentials or tapping into vast unused reserves is more wishful thinking than reality. It's a slow, incremental journey, demanding persistent effort and practice. Recognising this helps us appreciate the hard work behind every story of recovery and adapt our strategies accordingly.
“So many times, the brain’s ability to rewire has been described as ‘miraculous’ – but we’re scientists, we don’t believe in magic. These amazing behaviours that we see are rooted in hard work, repetition and training, not the magical reassignment of the brain’s resources.”
Reference
Makin, TR & Krakauer, JW. Against Cortical Reorganisation. eLife; 21 Nov 2023; DOI: doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84716
Contrary to the commonly-held view, the brain does not have the ability to rewire itself to compensate for the loss of sight, an amputation or stroke, for example, say scientists from the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University.
So many times, the brain’s ability to rewire has been described as ‘miraculous’ – but we’re scientists, we don’t believe in magicTamar MakinGDJ`Graphic representing brain circuits
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
AI system self-organises to develop features of brains of complex organisms
As neural systems such as the brain organise themselves and make connections, they have to balance competing demands. For example, energy and resources are needed to grow and sustain the network in physical space, while at the same time optimising the network for information processing. This trade-off shapes all brains within and across species, which may help explain why many brains converge on similar organisational solutions.
Jascha Achterberg, a Gates Scholar from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBSU) at the University of Cambridge said: “Not only is the brain great at solving complex problems, it does so while using very little energy. In our new work we show that considering the brain’s problem solving abilities alongside its goal of spending as few resources as possible can help us understand why brains look like they do.”
Co-lead author Dr Danyal Akarca, also from the MRC CBSU, added: “This stems from a broad principle, which is that biological systems commonly evolve to make the most of what energetic resources they have available to them. The solutions they come to are often very elegant and reflect the trade-offs between various forces imposed on them.”
In a study published today in Nature Machine Intelligence, Achterberg, Akarca and colleagues created an artificial system intended to model a very simplified version of the brain and applied physical constraints. They found that their system went on to develop certain key characteristics and tactics similar to those found in human brains.
Instead of real neurons, the system used computational nodes. Neurons and nodes are similar in function, in that each takes an input, transforms it, and produces an output, and a single node or neuron might connect to multiple others, all inputting information to be computed.
In their system, however, the researchers applied a ‘physical’ constraint on the system. Each node was given a specific location in a virtual space, and the further away two nodes were, the more difficult it was for them to communicate. This is similar to how neurons in the human brain are organised.
The researchers gave the system a simple task to complete – in this case a simplified version of a maze navigation task typically given to animals such as rats and macaques when studying the brain, where it has to combine multiple pieces of information to decide on the shortest route to get to the end point.
One of the reasons the team chose this particular task is because to complete it, the system needs to maintain a number of elements – start location, end location and intermediate steps – and once it has learned to do the task reliably, it is possible to observe, at different moments in a trial, which nodes are important. For example, one particular cluster of nodes may encode the finish locations, while others encode the available routes, and it is possible to track which nodes are active at different stages of the task.
Initially, the system does not know how to complete the task and makes mistakes. But when it is given feedback it gradually learns to get better at the task. It learns by changing the strength of the connections between its nodes, similar to how the strength of connections between brain cells changes as we learn. The system then repeats the task over and over again, until eventually it learns to perform it correctly.
With their system, however, the physical constraint meant that the further away two nodes were, the more difficult it was to build a connection between the two nodes in response to the feedback. In the human brain, connections that span a large physical distance are expensive to form and maintain.
When the system was asked to perform the task under these constraints, it used some of the same tricks used by real human brains to solve the task. For example, to get around the constraints, the artificial systems started to develop hubs – highly connected nodes that act as conduits for passing information across the network.
More surprising, however, was that the response profiles of individual nodes themselves began to change: in other words, rather than having a system where each node codes for one particular property of the maze task, like the goal location or the next choice, nodes developed a flexible coding scheme. This means that at different moments in time nodes might be firing for a mix of the properties of the maze. For instance, the same node might be able to encode multiple locations of a maze, rather than needing specialised nodes for encoding specific locations. This is another feature seen in the brains of complex organisms.
Co-author Professor Duncan Astle, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry, said: “This simple constraint – it’s harder to wire nodes that are far apart – forces artificial systems to produce some quite complicated characteristics. Interestingly, they are characteristics shared by biological systems like the human brain. I think that tells us something fundamental about why our brains are organised the way they are.”
Understanding the human brainThe team are hopeful that their AI system could begin to shed light on how these constraints, shape differences between people’s brains, and contribute to differences seen in those that experience cognitive or mental health difficulties.
Co-author Professor John Duncan from the MRC CBSU said: “These artificial brains give us a way to understand the rich and bewildering data we see when the activity of real neurons is recorded in real brains.”
Achterberg added: “Artificial ‘brains’ allow us to ask questions that it would be impossible to look at in an actual biological system. We can train the system to perform tasks and then play around experimentally with the constraints we impose, to see if it begins to look more like the brains of particular individuals.”
Implications for designing future AI systemsThe findings are likely to be of interest to the AI community, too, where they could allow for the development of more efficient systems, particularly in situations where there are likely to be physical constraints.
Dr Akarca said: “AI researchers are constantly trying to work out how to make complex, neural systems that can encode and perform in a flexible way that is efficient. To achieve this, we think that neurobiology will give us a lot of inspiration. For example, the overall wiring cost of the system we've created is much lower than you would find in a typical AI system.”
Many modern AI solutions involve using architectures that only superficially resemble a brain. The researchers say their works shows that the type of problem the AI is solving will influence which architecture is the most powerful to use.
Achterberg said: “If you want to build an artificially-intelligent system that solves similar problems to humans, then ultimately the system will end up looking much closer to an actual brain than systems running on large compute cluster that specialise in very different tasks to those carried out by humans. The architecture and structure we see in our artificial ‘brain’ is there because it is beneficial for handling the specific brain-like challenges it faces.”
This means that robots that have to process a large amount of constantly changing information with finite energetic resources could benefit from having brain structures not dissimilar to ours.
Achterberg added: “Brains of robots that are deployed in the real physical world are probably going to look more like our brains because they might face the same challenges as us. They need to constantly process new information coming in through their sensors while controlling their bodies to move through space towards a goal. Many systems will need to run all their computations with a limited supply of electric energy and so, to balance these energetic constraints with the amount of information it needs to process, it will probably need a brain structure similar to ours.”
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, Gates Cambridge, the James S McDonnell Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation and Google DeepMind.
Reference
Achterberg, J & Akarca, D et al. Spatially embedded recurrent neural networks reveal widespread links between structural and functional neuroscience findings. Nature Machine Intelligence; 20 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s42256-023-00748-9
Cambridge scientists have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order to solve tasks.
Not only is the brain great at solving complex problems, it does so while using very little energyJascha AchterbergDeltaWorksGraphic representing an artificially intelligent brain
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
AI system self-organises to develop features of brains of complex organisms
As neural systems such as the brain organise themselves and make connections, they have to balance competing demands. For example, energy and resources are needed to grow and sustain the network in physical space, while at the same time optimising the network for information processing. This trade-off shapes all brains within and across species, which may help explain why many brains converge on similar organisational solutions.
Jascha Achterberg, a Gates Scholar from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBSU) at the University of Cambridge said: “Not only is the brain great at solving complex problems, it does so while using very little energy. In our new work we show that considering the brain’s problem solving abilities alongside its goal of spending as few resources as possible can help us understand why brains look like they do.”
Co-lead author Dr Danyal Akarca, also from the MRC CBSU, added: “This stems from a broad principle, which is that biological systems commonly evolve to make the most of what energetic resources they have available to them. The solutions they come to are often very elegant and reflect the trade-offs between various forces imposed on them.”
In a study published today in Nature Machine Intelligence, Achterberg, Akarca and colleagues created an artificial system intended to model a very simplified version of the brain and applied physical constraints. They found that their system went on to develop certain key characteristics and tactics similar to those found in human brains.
Instead of real neurons, the system used computational nodes. Neurons and nodes are similar in function, in that each takes an input, transforms it, and produces an output, and a single node or neuron might connect to multiple others, all inputting information to be computed.
In their system, however, the researchers applied a ‘physical’ constraint on the system. Each node was given a specific location in a virtual space, and the further away two nodes were, the more difficult it was for them to communicate. This is similar to how neurons in the human brain are organised.
The researchers gave the system a simple task to complete – in this case a simplified version of a maze navigation task typically given to animals such as rats and macaques when studying the brain, where it has to combine multiple pieces of information to decide on the shortest route to get to the end point.
One of the reasons the team chose this particular task is because to complete it, the system needs to maintain a number of elements – start location, end location and intermediate steps – and once it has learned to do the task reliably, it is possible to observe, at different moments in a trial, which nodes are important. For example, one particular cluster of nodes may encode the finish locations, while others encode the available routes, and it is possible to track which nodes are active at different stages of the task.
Initially, the system does not know how to complete the task and makes mistakes. But when it is given feedback it gradually learns to get better at the task. It learns by changing the strength of the connections between its nodes, similar to how the strength of connections between brain cells changes as we learn. The system then repeats the task over and over again, until eventually it learns to perform it correctly.
With their system, however, the physical constraint meant that the further away two nodes were, the more difficult it was to build a connection between the two nodes in response to the feedback. In the human brain, connections that span a large physical distance are expensive to form and maintain.
When the system was asked to perform the task under these constraints, it used some of the same tricks used by real human brains to solve the task. For example, to get around the constraints, the artificial systems started to develop hubs – highly connected nodes that act as conduits for passing information across the network.
More surprising, however, was that the response profiles of individual nodes themselves began to change: in other words, rather than having a system where each node codes for one particular property of the maze task, like the goal location or the next choice, nodes developed a flexible coding scheme. This means that at different moments in time nodes might be firing for a mix of the properties of the maze. For instance, the same node might be able to encode multiple locations of a maze, rather than needing specialised nodes for encoding specific locations. This is another feature seen in the brains of complex organisms.
Co-author Professor Duncan Astle, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry, said: “This simple constraint – it’s harder to wire nodes that are far apart – forces artificial systems to produce some quite complicated characteristics. Interestingly, they are characteristics shared by biological systems like the human brain. I think that tells us something fundamental about why our brains are organised the way they are.”
Understanding the human brainThe team are hopeful that their AI system could begin to shed light on how these constraints, shape differences between people’s brains, and contribute to differences seen in those that experience cognitive or mental health difficulties.
Co-author Professor John Duncan from the MRC CBSU said: “These artificial brains give us a way to understand the rich and bewildering data we see when the activity of real neurons is recorded in real brains.”
Achterberg added: “Artificial ‘brains’ allow us to ask questions that it would be impossible to look at in an actual biological system. We can train the system to perform tasks and then play around experimentally with the constraints we impose, to see if it begins to look more like the brains of particular individuals.”
Implications for designing future AI systemsThe findings are likely to be of interest to the AI community, too, where they could allow for the development of more efficient systems, particularly in situations where there are likely to be physical constraints.
Dr Akarca said: “AI researchers are constantly trying to work out how to make complex, neural systems that can encode and perform in a flexible way that is efficient. To achieve this, we think that neurobiology will give us a lot of inspiration. For example, the overall wiring cost of the system we've created is much lower than you would find in a typical AI system.”
Many modern AI solutions involve using architectures that only superficially resemble a brain. The researchers say their works shows that the type of problem the AI is solving will influence which architecture is the most powerful to use.
Achterberg said: “If you want to build an artificially-intelligent system that solves similar problems to humans, then ultimately the system will end up looking much closer to an actual brain than systems running on large compute cluster that specialise in very different tasks to those carried out by humans. The architecture and structure we see in our artificial ‘brain’ is there because it is beneficial for handling the specific brain-like challenges it faces.”
This means that robots that have to process a large amount of constantly changing information with finite energetic resources could benefit from having brain structures not dissimilar to ours.
Achterberg added: “Brains of robots that are deployed in the real physical world are probably going to look more like our brains because they might face the same challenges as us. They need to constantly process new information coming in through their sensors while controlling their bodies to move through space towards a goal. Many systems will need to run all their computations with a limited supply of electric energy and so, to balance these energetic constraints with the amount of information it needs to process, it will probably need a brain structure similar to ours.”
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, Gates Cambridge, the James S McDonnell Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation and Google DeepMind.
Reference
Achterberg, J & Akarca, D et al. Spatially embedded recurrent neural networks reveal widespread links between structural and functional neuroscience findings. Nature Machine Intelligence; 20 Nov 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s42256-023-00748-9
Cambridge scientists have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order to solve tasks.
Not only is the brain great at solving complex problems, it does so while using very little energyJascha AchterbergDeltaWorksGraphic representing an artificially intelligent brain
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Innovative aquaculture system turns waste wood into nutritious seafood
These long, white saltwater clams are the world’s fastest-growing bivalve and can reach 30cm long in just six months. They do this by burrowing into waste wood and converting it into highly-nutritious protein.
The researchers found that the levels of Vitamin B12 in the Naked Clams were higher than in most other bivalves – and almost twice the amount found in blue mussels.
And with the addition of an algae-based feed to the system, the Naked Clams can be fortified with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids - nutrients essential for human health.
Shipworms have traditionally been viewed as a pest because they bore through any wood immersed in seawater, including ships, piers and docks.
The researchers developed a fully-enclosed aquaculture system that can be completely controlled, eliminating the water quality and food safety concerns often associated with mussel and oyster farming.
And the modular design means it can be used in urban settings, far from the sea.
“Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment,” said Dr David Willer, Henslow Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the report.
He added: “Naked Clam aquaculture has never been attempted before. We’re growing them using wood that would otherwise go to landfill or be recycled, to produce food that’s high in protein and essential nutrients like Vitamin B12.”
Scientifically named Teredinids, these creatures have no shell, but are classed as bivalve shellfish and related to oysters and mussels.
Because the Naked Clams don’t put energy into growing shells, they grow much faster than mussels and oysters which can take two years to reach a harvestable size.
The report is published today in the journal Sustainable Agriculture.
Wild shipworms are eaten in the Philippines - either raw, or battered and fried like calamari. But for British consumers, the researchers think Naked Clams will be more popular as a ‘white meat’ substitute in processed foods like fish fingers and fishcakes.
“We urgently need alternative food sources that provide the micronutrient-rich profile of meat and fish but without the environmental cost, and our system offers a sustainable solution,” said Dr Reuben Shipway at the University of Plymouth’s School of Biological & Marine Sciences, senior author of the report.
He added: “Switching from eating beef burgers to Naked Clam nuggets may well become a fantastic way to reduce your carbon footprint.”
The research is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth, and has attracted funding from sources including The Fishmongers’ Company, British Ecological Society, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Seale-Hayne Trust, and BBSRC
The team is now trialling different types of waste wood and algal feed in their system to optimise the growth, taste and nutritional profile of the Naked Clams – and is working with Cambridge Enterprise to scale-up and commercialise the system.
Reference
Willer, D.F. et al: ‘Naked Clams to open a new sector in sustainable nutritious food production.’ Sustainable Agriculture, Nov 23. DOI: 10.1038/s44264-023-00004-y
Researchers hoping to rebrand a marine pest as a nutritious food have developed the world’s first system of farming shipworms, which they have renamed ‘Naked Clams’.
Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment.Dr David WillerUniversity of PlymouthNaked Clams in wooden growth panel
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Innovative aquaculture system turns waste wood into nutritious seafood
These long, white saltwater clams are the world’s fastest-growing bivalve and can reach 30cm long in just six months. They do this by burrowing into waste wood and converting it into highly-nutritious protein.
The researchers found that the levels of Vitamin B12 in the Naked Clams were higher than in most other bivalves – and almost twice the amount found in blue mussels.
And with the addition of an algae-based feed to the system, the Naked Clams can be fortified with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids - nutrients essential for human health.
Shipworms have traditionally been viewed as a pest because they bore through any wood immersed in seawater, including ships, piers and docks.
The researchers developed a fully-enclosed aquaculture system that can be completely controlled, eliminating the water quality and food safety concerns often associated with mussel and oyster farming.
And the modular design means it can be used in urban settings, far from the sea.
“Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment,” said Dr David Willer, Henslow Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the report.
He added: “Naked Clam aquaculture has never been attempted before. We’re growing them using wood that would otherwise go to landfill or be recycled, to produce food that’s high in protein and essential nutrients like Vitamin B12.”
Scientifically named Teredinids, these creatures have no shell, but are classed as bivalve shellfish and related to oysters and mussels.
Because the Naked Clams don’t put energy into growing shells, they grow much faster than mussels and oysters which can take two years to reach a harvestable size.
The report is published today in the journal Sustainable Agriculture.
Wild shipworms are eaten in the Philippines - either raw, or battered and fried like calamari. But for British consumers, the researchers think Naked Clams will be more popular as a ‘white meat’ substitute in processed foods like fish fingers and fishcakes.
“We urgently need alternative food sources that provide the micronutrient-rich profile of meat and fish but without the environmental cost, and our system offers a sustainable solution,” said Dr Reuben Shipway at the University of Plymouth’s School of Biological & Marine Sciences, senior author of the report.
He added: “Switching from eating beef burgers to Naked Clam nuggets may well become a fantastic way to reduce your carbon footprint.”
The research is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth, and has attracted funding from sources including The Fishmongers’ Company, British Ecological Society, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Seale-Hayne Trust, and BBSRC
The team is now trialling different types of waste wood and algal feed in their system to optimise the growth, taste and nutritional profile of the Naked Clams – and is working with Cambridge Enterprise to scale-up and commercialise the system.
Reference
Willer, D.F. et al: ‘Naked Clams to open a new sector in sustainable nutritious food production.’ Sustainable Agriculture, Nov 23. DOI: 10.1038/s44264-023-00004-y
Researchers hoping to rebrand a marine pest as a nutritious food have developed the world’s first system of farming shipworms, which they have renamed ‘Naked Clams’.
Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment.Dr David WillerUniversity of PlymouthNaked Clams in wooden growth panel
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.