Brain Rhythms in Altered Vision After Stroke (BRAVAS)
Year of award: 2017
Grantholders
Dr Gemma Learmonth
University of Glasgow
Project summary
Stroke affects 152,000 people in the UK each year, and most will experience visual problems. Hemispatial neglect is a debilitating disorder in which patients behave as though one side of their visual world (usually the left) no longer exists. It is difficult to treat, and is linked to poor overall recovery and lower quality of life. In the healthy brain, groups of cells fire together at different speeds called oscillations. Oscillations help the brain to make sense of the world by enhancing or suppressing the incoming visual information before further processing. Some oscillations are disrupted by stroke, but we do not know how they are affected in hemispatial neglect.
I aim to identify how oscillations change after stroke both in the short and longer term. This information will be used to improve vision by actively changing disrupted oscillations using biofeedback and brain stimulation interventions.
My findings will help to develop a new treatment for hemispatial neglect.