Barbara Sahakian facts for kids

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian is a famous English scientist who studies the brain. She is a professor at the University of Cambridge, where she teaches about how the brain works and how it affects our behavior. She also helps people as a clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.

Dr. Sahakian is known worldwide for her work on how medicines affect the brain, the ethics of brain science, and understanding brain conditions. She is a member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, a college at Cambridge University. She is also the president of the International Neuroethics Society, which she helped start. She used to be the president of the British Association for Psychopharmacology from 2012 to 2014.

Education and Early Career

Dr. Sahakian earned her PhD in psychopharmacology at Darwin College, Cambridge. This means she studied how medicines affect the mind and behavior. After her PhD, she trained to become a Chartered Psychologist, which allows her to work with people to understand and help with their mental health.

What Dr. Sahakian Studies

Dr. Sahakian is well-known for her research on how to improve brain function using different treatments. She also works on finding Alzheimer's disease early and understanding how brain conditions like depression affect thinking. A big part of her work is about neuroethics, which looks at the right and wrong ways to use brain science.

Her research aims to understand why people have difficulties with thinking, emotions, and behavior. This helps her team develop better ways to treat these issues with medicines or other therapies. Her lab focuses on finding brain disorders early. They also test new medicines and brain training methods to see if they can help.

How Brain Research Is Done

To do her research, Dr. Sahakian uses special techniques. These include:

• Psychopharmacology: Studying how medicines affect the brain and behavior.
• Neuropsychology: Looking at how brain conditions affect thinking and memory.
• Neuroimaging: Using brain scans like fMRI and PET to see what's happening inside the brain.

Her team studies conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, ADHD, OCD, depression, and mania. They also look at understanding challenges with certain habits.

Brain Health and Ethics

In 2007, Dr. Sahakian shared her concerns about using medicines meant for people with dementia or Alzheimer's to make healthy people's brains work better. She wondered if this was ethical or fair.

In 2014, she wrote an article about how we can achieve good brain health for everyone in the future. She included ideas from many experts in brain science and technology. She wrote this article for Sir John Beddington, who was the UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser at the time.

Publications and Influence

Dr. Sahakian has written over 400 scientific papers. These papers have appeared in important journals like Science, Nature, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal. She is also an editor for Psychological Medicine. Her work is highly respected, and she has a high "h-index" of 100, which shows how often her work is cited by other scientists.

She has also co-written books, including:

• Bad Moves. How decision making goes wrong and the ethics of smart drugs (2013)
• The Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (2011)

Dr. Sahakian is involved with many important groups in brain science. She is on the council of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the review board for the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She is also a professor at London Imperial and a researcher at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. She was named one of the top women in science by the Royal Institution.

Brain Tests She Helped Create

Dr. Sahakian's research uses special brain tests called the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). She helped invent these tests in the 1980s. CANTAB tests are now used in over 700 research centers around the world and have been part of more than 1,200 scientific studies. Dr. Sahakian works as a senior consultant for Cambridge Cognition, a company that provides CANTAB tests.

One of these tests, the CANTAB PAL touchscreen test, checks visual memory and how well people learn new things. This test received a top rating in 2014 for its excellence. CANTAB tests have even been highlighted for helping the UK economy.

Brain Health Policy

Dr. Sahakian plays a key role in creating important international plans for brain health. She helped with a report on big challenges in global mental health for the National Institute of Mental Health. She also worked on the UK Government's Foresight Project in 2008, which focused on keeping our brains healthy and happy throughout our lives. This project talked about important ideas like "cognitive reserve" (how much your brain can handle) and "resilience to stress" (how well you bounce back from stress).

In 2014, Dr. Sahakian spoke about brain health policy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Brain Research.

In the News

Dr. Sahakian often talks to the public about science. She has appeared on TV shows like BBC Newsnight and radio programs like The Life Scientific and the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. She has also been interviewed by newspapers like The Sunday Times and magazines like Forbes Online.

In 2014, she answered questions from the public online in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session. She talked about topics like depression and medicines that might improve brain function. In 2014, she also helped explain that the idea of humans only using 10% of their brains is a myth, especially after the movie Lucy came out. In 2015, she helped with an event at the Science Museum in London, where her lab members showed demonstrations. She often talks about how important it is to understand brain health and brain diseases.

Awards and Recognitions

Since 2004, Dr. Sahakian has been a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is also connected to the Human Brain Project. She was also a judge for the 2017 Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung Prize.

She was given the F C Donders Chair of Psychopharmacology at the University of Utrecht in 2005 and the Distinguished International Scholar Award at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. In 2010, she received the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology Senior Investigator Award. In 2008, she gave the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture in Melbourne, Australia.

In 2015, Dr. Sahakian received a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Cambridge. This is the highest degree the university gives for outstanding scientific research.

In July 2017, she was chosen as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). This is a very high honor from the UK's national academy for humanities and social sciences.

Selected Books

• Mental Capital and Wellbeing (2009)
• Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (2011)
• Bad Moves: How Decision Making Goes Wrong, and the Ethics of Smart Drugs (2013)
• ... and Brain Scans: How FMRI Reveals what Really Goes on in Our Minds (2016)
• Translational Neuropsychopharmacology (2016)