Background

The ability to navigate is supported by a wide network of brain areas which are particularly vulnerable to disruption in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Topographical disorientation is a frequently reported complaint of TBI patients, with moderate to severe injury often leading to a generalised impairment in spatial cognition in both familiar and unfamiliar environments (Claessen et al., 2016). Moreover, object-location memory may be particularly vulnerable to the lasting effects of TBI, further exaggerating spatial navigation difficulties (Ruggiero et al., 2014).

Dr Rebecca Knight and Dr Caroline Whyatt, lead a project of researchers from University College London, University of Lyon and University of East Anglia, to investigate wayfinding and path integration performance in people with TBI.

What did the researchers do?

The research team implemented the use of a smartphone app - Sea Hero Quest, in order to measure spatial processing in patients with TBI. The app allowed the research team to collect remote data from a clinical group and compare this performance to large-scale, global data. See details of the game, including its development. 

Findings from this project suggest long–lasting clinical difficulties in spatial processing in TBI patients that can be detected with a smartphone app.

Background

Research in eyewitness testimony has revealed that the way questions are worded can have an influence on the way they are answered (Loftus, 2005; Zaragoza, Belli, & Payment, 2007). For instance, asking “how tall was the man?” can elicit difference responses than asking “how short was the man?” A great deal of research has focused on this verbal misinformation in police interviews, but the effects of nonverbal misinformation (i.e., from hand gestures) has only recently been investigated.

What does the researcher do?

Dr Daniel Gurney has conducted a series of experiments demonstrating that individuals can recall events they have witnessed differently if the person interviewing them performed misleading hand gestures when doing so. For instance, if the interviewer touched their chin while asking if a man had any other distinguishing facial features, participants were more likely to say that he had a beard. This research has also extended to more serious crimes, when a ‘stabbing’ gesture was shown to result in more participants reporting that a perpetrator used a knife, even though none was present.

Daniel continues to extend this work by examining which gestures are most likely to mislead individuals and under what circumstances.

Background

The number of students with poor mental health (anxiety and depression in the main) has risen considerably over the past ten years in the Western higher education institutions. Teaching staff are in an ideal position to notice students struggling with their mental health. Students do approach teaching staff who appear friendly for support. Staff report they are unable to provide effective support due to a lack of training. They are confused about the boundaries, reluctant to have difficult conversations in case they make things worse and unskilled in referral procedures.

This Erasmus+ funded project engages four universities across Europe to gather data from staff on their curriculum needs for a training to support student mental health more effectively.  The curriculum will be tested in pilot studies in each university. Following the launch of the amended version from the rigorous evaluation it is intended to scale it up to be freely available for all universities to access.

Professor Helen Payne collaborating with three European universities, an adult training curriculum specialist in e-learning and a social media organisation. The UK, Italy, Greece, Germany and Belgium are all involved.

What did the researchers do?

The research team conducted interviews and focus groups in all four universities to elicit staff and student views on a possible curriculum content and an analysis of their needs for supporting student mental health. There have been two international intensives meetings in the UK and Italy so far. the curriculum is beginning to take shape. A website has been developed and updates are available on it. The next two meetings will be in Greece and Belgium. The project ends December 2025.

Helen acts as principal supervisor for many doctoral students in the subject areas of Autism, dance movement therapy, and student mental health.

Background

We constantly make decisions about how to act in our environment, guided by sensory information. This sensory-motor coupling relies on feedback from our movements, helping us learn how our actions relate to our surroundings.

From a young age, infants explore their environment, testing different movements to understand the relationship between their actions and the sensory feedback they receive. This exploration helps them develop a sense of their own abilities and how to interact with their world. As they grow, this understanding influences their control over movements and their ability to perceive opportunities for action, known as affordances.

What does the researcher do?

Dr Caroline Whyatt is currently supervising a range of studies aimed at profiling sensory-motor coupling and affordance-based decision making in neurodiverse populations. Alongside, Dr Rebecca Knight and PhD student Christy Goodro, the team is examining sensory-motor coupling and sensory weighting in affordance-based decision making in immersive virtual reality paradigms.

We are continuing to develop and extend this work into applications using the Motek GRAIL system, which allows precise profiling of how visual and physical perturbations affect sensory-motor performance.