Writing about ‘Open Brain-surgery’

A Psychology researcher at Bangor University was shortlisted for the 2011 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize sponsored by the Guardian and Wellcome Trust recently.

James Keidel's piece about ‘Going into brain surgery with your eyes open’ is available on the Wellcome Trust site (here) and describes how removing brain tumours is made safer if the patient is awake and can respond to assessments so that the neurosurgeon can establish which parts of the brain really need to be spared surgery to retain brain function.

James KeidelJames, who is 36 and comes originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was attracted to Bangor University by the opportunity to work in Professor Guillaume Thierry's laboratory at the School of Psychology, where James has been researching since 2010. There he conducts functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of how the brain encodes meaning, as well as investigating the organization of the bilingual brain.

James expands: “I saw the competition advertised in the Guardian. I had done a bit of what could be called "popular science" writing previously and I’d given a talk as part of a workshop at the British Science Festival a couple of years ago.

I chose the subject as I’d worked in a related field in conjunction with the Departments of Neuropsychology and Neurosurgery at Salford Royal Foundation Trust Hospital.

Publication date: 6 December 2011