Lorina Naci facts for kids
.jpg)
Dr. Lorina Naci is a brilliant scientist from Albania and Canada. She is a psychologist and a neuroscientist, meaning she studies the brain and how it works. She was born in Tirana. In 2017, she received a special award called the "Young International Talent" scholarship from the L'Oréal-UNESCO program. This award celebrates women in science. In 2023, she was chosen as a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, which is a great honor.
Contents
About Lorina Naci
Lorina Naci was born in Tirana, Albania. She first studied in her home country. Later, she received a scholarship to study at an American university, the University of Georgia in Athens. After that, she won another scholarship to study in England at the famous University of Cambridge.
She earned her doctorate degree in science. Then, she moved to London, Ontario, Canada. There, she joined the University of Western Ontario to work at the Western Brain and Mind Institute. She worked with another well-known neuroscientist, Adrian Owen. She married a Canadian scientist who also works in her field.
In 2017, Dr. Naci received the International Talent Award. This was part of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program. Also in 2017, Lorina Naci joined the Global Brain Health Institute in Dublin. She became an assistant professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin.
Her Amazing Discoveries
Dr. Naci's work is very important. She helps us understand how the brain works, especially in people who are in a persistent vegetative state. These are patients who seem to be unconscious and unable to respond.
Talking to Patients in a Vegetative State
In 2013, Dr. Naci and Adrian Owen created a new way to talk with these patients. They used a special brain scanner called a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. This machine can see which parts of the brain are active.
They would place a patient inside the fMRI scanner. Then, they would ask simple "yes" or "no" questions. By looking at the patient's brain activity, they could figure out the answers. This was a huge step forward for understanding these patients.
Brain Activity and Movies
In 2014, the Canadian team tried another interesting method. They showed a film by Alfred Hitchcock to healthy people. They also showed it to two patients who were in a coma.
They used the fMRI scanner to watch the brain activity of everyone. They found something amazing. The brain of one of the coma patients, a young man, reacted to the movie just like a healthy person's brain. This showed that he might be aware even though he couldn't move or speak. However, the other patient, a young woman, showed no brain activity.
How Her Work Changed Things
The discoveries made by Owen and Naci caught the attention of people all over the world. Their work was written about in hundreds of newspapers. It was even on the front page of the New York Times twice!
Their research was also discussed on many television shows. These included BBC News, Channel 4 News, ITN News, Sky News, and CNN. It was also talked about on many radio programs. Their findings were featured in several TV documentaries, like 60 Minutes in the USA and Panorama BBC Special Report in the UK. This shows how important and groundbreaking their research is.
See also
In Spanish: Lorina Naci para niños
