Australian medicinal cannabis company Zelira Therapeutics is working with America’s Parkinson’s Foundation to gather insights from people with PD about their understanding of and use of medical cannabis and hemp-derived therapies. Zelira is assisting in the development of a survey to understand the current use and perceived benefits of medical cannabis among people with PD. The results will be reviewed, and will possibly pave the way for a future clinical trial on the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis use by people with PD. Zelira will also incorporate survey insights to inform future development of clinically validated medical cannabis and hemp-derived CBD medicines for people with Parkinson's disease.

The PrecisionMed Traumatic Brain Injury Registry (TBI) is a biological sample bank of DNA, longitudinal CSF, RNA, serum and plasma linked to clinical data. Driving the project is PrecisionMed Inc, which supplies human cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) and is a leader in clinical data procurement and sample management. The registry is expected to help discovery and validate biomarkers for neurological disease. It aims to enroll up to 2000 well-characterised participant donors who will be recruited, evaluated, clinically studied, and sampled from up to 10 investigative sites in the US. Key aspects of donors’ clinical status will be evaluated every four months with simultaneous biological sampling.

The recent explosion of neuroscience techniques has proven to be instrumental in understanding the healthy brain, and in the development of neuropsychiatric treatments. One of the key techniques available to us is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows us to examine the human brain non-invasively, and observe brain activity in real time. Through fMRI, we are beginning to build a deeper understanding of our thoughts, motivations, and behaviours. As neuroscientists unravel the regions of the brain involved in reward and motivation, we are likely to develop the capacity to influence emotional responses, such as love, using drugs. fMRI studies have also been used to indicate that many people who would not regard themselves as racist show a racial bias in their emotional responses to faces of another racial group.

Nick Alderman, a prominent figure in UK neuro-rehab, has received the ‘Award for Distinguished Contribution to Practice’ from the British Psychological Society. This is an annual mid-to-late career honour recognising an outstanding and lasting contribution to a particular area, for the benefit of people and organisation. In this case the award was made for his contribution to neurobehavioural rehabilitation, and was presented at the British Psychological Society Division of Neuropsychology Annual Conference in Manchester. Alderman represents Elysium, which is soon opening The Avalon Centre in Swindon, a purpose built neurological centre for men and women over the age of 18 years, who have an acquired brain injury.

A UK stroke unit which was facing closure has been saved amid soaring demand from patients.

Askham Village Community, in Cambridgeshire, is enabling patients to share their own experiences of care and help to shape examples of best practice. 

Family-run Askham has grown from a care home for the elderly into a community of five specialist homes since being taken over by the Goga family in the 1980s.

Today it provides care and neurorehabilitation, as well as specialist dementia and end of life care.