Cathy Price facts for kids

Catherine J. Price is a British neuroscientist. This means she is a scientist who studies the brain and the nervous system. She is a professor at University College London. There, she leads the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.

Professor Price's main goal is to understand how our brains handle language. She wants to know how the brain helps us speak and understand. Her research also looks at why people have trouble with language after brain damage. This could be from a stroke or brain surgery. She works to find ways to help them recover. She is known as a leading expert in her field.

Becoming a Brain Scientist

Catherine Price earned her first degree in 1984. She then completed her PhD in 1990. Both of her degrees are from Birkbeck College.

Professor Kia Nobre, another famous scientist, spoke highly of Price. She said Price succeeded in a tough field. She did this with kindness, hard work, and a good sense of humor. Price always focused on using her research to help patients.

Price first studied how people with brain damage read and recognize objects. In 1991, she joined a special research unit. There, she started using PET scans. These scans helped her see how different parts of the brain work. She learned more about how we read, listen to speech, and speak.

Exploring the Brain's Language Secrets

In 1995, Professor Price moved to University College London. She began using MRI scans. These scans show how language skills and IQ are linked to brain structure. For example, she found that learning can actually change the brain's structure.

She showed this in three important studies. These studies looked at:

• How learning a second language changes the brain.
• How learning to read as an adult affects the brain.
• Natural brain changes in teenagers linked to their verbal and nonverbal IQ.

Professor Price has also shared two big ideas about the brain.

How the Brain Handles Language

Her first idea is called "cognitive ontologies." This idea suggests that no single part of the brain is just for language. Instead, language skills come from many brain areas working together. Each of these areas also helps with other things, not just language. Price believes understanding this can help us create better ways to help patients.

Why Brains Recover Differently

Her second idea is "cognitive degeneracy." This means that the same language task can be done in different ways by the brain. It's like having many paths to reach the same destination. Understanding why and when the brain uses different paths is key. This helps explain how patients recover language after brain damage.

Since 2012, Price has been working on a new tool. It's called the PLORAS study. This tool helps predict how well people will recover language after a stroke. She is building a huge database. It includes information from thousands of stroke survivors. This data helps predict recovery for new patients. It looks at how others with similar brain damage recovered.

Professor Price has written many important scientific papers. She has published over 300 papers. These papers have been cited by other scientists more than 24,000 times. This shows how much her work influences the field.

Awards and Recognitions

Professor Price has received many awards for her important work. Some of these include:

• The Minnie Mitchel Goodall Studentship (1989)
• Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship (1997)
• Organization for Human Brain Mapping Early Career Investigator Award (2001)
• Human Brain Mapping Editor's Choice Award (2006)
• Justine et Yves Sergent award (2008)
• Ipsen Foundation Neuropsychology Prize (2012)
• Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship (2012, 2017)
• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) (2014)
• 5th Suffrage award for Life Sciences (2018)
• Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (2020)
• Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) (2022)