Life Updates, Big News & What's Coming Next

In this short episode, newly titled Dr. Bethany Facer shares insights from her PhD research on Parkinson's disease. Sahir and Bethany also discuss their upcoming podcast series on cross-cultural research funded by the International Association of Cross Cultural Psychology (IACCP).

Transcript

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Smooth Brain Society.~ this is gonna be quite a short catch-up episode today, in because we're in the middle of summer and we have a few updates Beth and I to share with you. First thing, I think the biggest personal update to give is Beth. You are now Dr. Bethany Facer, so congratulations. I it, Dr Bethany Face didn't think the day would come, that's a lie I did, but it was quite something, but very exciting. Now, super proud of you. ~ so we all know, I guess on and off you have mentioned you've work in your research was in Parkinson's. And of course we have an entire episode which we will link below and it'll show up about Parkinson's, which we did with yourself. ~ but at that time you had not finished a few of your studies and there were some results still left. So we you had left us on a bit of a cliffhanger. So maybe you can update people on I guess quick recap of what your work was and then what are the cool things you actually found in your PhD. Yep, this is a good question. I think probably I'll share one of the chapters because that's probably the most exciting one. So yeah, looked at people who were very newly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, literally within the first six months, hadn't taken any medication yet. And I put them in a MRI scanner, tried to some pictures of the brain, have a little bit of a look, see what's going on. And the main point of the study that I was doing is I was using some interesting kind of like imaging techniques, imagine just like using a different type of camera to figure out what's going on. But the biggest thing is I wanted to see ~ if we could see any differences using, let's say there's a camera that's used really often and it's, you know, very, you know, we know what we're going to see. And then we're using more and more unusual techniques using this camera to try and maybe like adjusting the exposure or the brightness levels. So using something a little bit experimental. And we were able to basically what we did find out is when I was looking at the white matter in this brain, this technique that I was using was more sensitive and found things that also the cameras which were more settings are more regularly used found then also found some things as well which we wouldn't be able to see in the normal camera so these different kind of playing around with the brightness the exposure has told us a little bit more and we can also now verify actually this can be used in people with Parkinson's disease.~ I wouldn't want to say what I will say is I we did find some findings in the white matter but I probably would not share that right now as the sample size. That means that we only did it in around about 10 people, which is a perfectly good number. So we call that a pilot study when we kind of test out to see if it's working and, you know, if we're kind of getting the kind of findings that we are kind of making sense. And once you do that, it's like proof of concept almost. And then you go on to get some more money, hopefully, or, you know, try and argue for some more money so then you can do it in a bigger. of group of people and say actually we are finding this. So it was a fantastic proof of concept, it does find some interesting things, there does seem to be some and it basically what it does is it looks even within the white matter ~ than these other techniques. So imagine the brain is a big map and I looked at basically the highways of how the cities connect but what I was looking at really specifically is kind of the difference is happening on the actual roads themselves and then what is actually happening outside those roads. So maybe there's like road work crews coming who are taking up, you know, quite a lot of space within those, you know, it the road work crews are taking up space next to the highways or the highways themselves damaged, which in usually you can't really do very easily. So that's what we're looking at. this technique does seem to find some things. And that's what it was on. my god, that's that's so all that's so awesome. And does that basically mean, well, you you said it's a pilot study, so you would need to do a lot more, but is there hope then that this can kind of be rolled out to say anybody who has Parkinson's or has showing symptoms of Parkinson's comes to a goes for a checkup and can these techniques be used on them? Because I assume they're not widely available as it stands. Yeah, good question. So there's two things there. So yes, it would be interesting to look at because it basically tells us a little bit more about inflammation in the brain and again, possible damage to the actual kind of roads themselves. So that's interesting to find out and tells us the level of kind of inflammation a little bit more. So basically the brain is attacking itself a little bit. That sounds a lot worse than it is. That's, that's the, don't be, please don't be scared by that. It does all the time. It's just protecting us. But it's on like a smaller level. thing is, yes, it could definitely be used probably for things like, would be interesting possibly to use in clinical trials if you wanted to look a little bit deeper into the why matter. The thing is, which probably would need a little bit more kind of tailoring is, it's quite a long, it's not that long, but it's maybe about the whole thing, maybe takes about 15 minutes. And usually you have maybe a slot that's at a half an hour or an hour and the scans who would be figuring out if those findings are important enough to incorporate Okay. him. Yeah, so. Yeah. So at the moment you can basically see all these little things that you couldn't see before, but you're not exactly sure what they do yet, so something's this I think, well, I know that they're up for interpretation, but I think I know what's happening, but it's in such a small sample size. wouldn't, don't, I've not done loads of, as we call it, inferential statistics. And that means like stats, like P values are showing like, yes, this group is bigger than this group. So this area is showing more generation, for example, compared to the healthy controls. It was more like. we're looking at them at, you know, the differences, but we can speculate what's going on, but truly for me to say, yes, this is 100%. I would need to do it in a bigger cohort, which would possibly be like a postdoc, for example. Fair enough. So we'll flip the question which you ask everybody and two million pounds. What is your what would your dream research be then? Ethics are on holiday?~ If I had like three if I had two billion pounds it wouldn't be this is this It wouldn't be in this. ~ is great But it's you wouldn't be two billion pounds to do this. I mean if somebody's just got maybe like£50,000, this would be absolutely fine. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Fift fifty thousand pounds apart from paying for your salary? I was actually thinking about, no, maybe a bit more, maybe 50,000 and then salary separately. Yeah, so I was just thinking, I was thinking Fair enough. Awesome. like, so maybe two billion pounds. Honestly, if I was to do one that was like, so I would want to do a complete worldwide study, because a lot of studies are specific to the course like America and Europe and a little bit of China and India as well.~ But, you know, a lot of kind of countries and ethnicities are left out on So I'd first of want to make sure that was done kind of worldwide using kind of similar scanners. I think something I'm finding really interesting is environmental factors. Mm-hmm. So within ~ Parkinson's disease, it's the fastest growing neurodegenerative disease.~ But this can't be explained by the ageing population alone. Okay. So there's something else and we don't really know why. The numbers are increasing. So that would be really interesting to look more at environmental factors. this would probably include tracking. You'd really have to track the history of everybody. It would be so complex. We'd need such an in-depth kind of understanding. And I mean like... What I really love is that the Biobank does a really great job of this. It just scans everybody. So it would be really great to see. I mean, there is obviously research with this, but it would be really great to see scans and information of people before they are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. As a lot of this, it's things that people think happens like 10, 20 years before. And there are certain ways that we can look at this. There's something called rapid eye movement, behavioural disorder.~ Basically, it's where you move when you're sleeping, you move in your sleep. ~ And there's quite a high percentage of people who that who have Parkinson's, who go on to get Parkinson's disease. But it's a very specific symptom and not a lot of people don't get it. And it's because it's so heterogeneous, it would be good to widen that. So it's not just looking at those people as you call them, prodromal, is before they go on to show symptoms. So it would be a massive worldwide study,~ full ~ history. of everywhere they've lived, ~ just as much as it, but that would, that's something I'd need to do so much. I'd need to have more understanding and have a team of how we would kind of put this kind of survey or questionnaire together. And that, and of course, like genetics as well, cause genetics are cool. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So I think that would be probably two billion pounds worth, cause we'd, I'd want to, you know, hopefully buy scanners for, you know, some of the, maybe. Yeah. l almost every country wherever we can. Yeah, especially those who don't maybe have the scanners and then also train up people from those regions to do the scanning. And think that's probably that's something very important as well. Yeah, that'd~ be my dream study. Brilliant. No, I I mean your point kind of brings us to the other big update we have, which ~ when you're talking about sort of cultural differences and population differences and interests in environmental differences between sort of conditions or areas and how they can affect things. We have been we received a grant recently by the International Association of Cross Cultural Psychology to do a set of eight to ten episodes.~ we'll the goal will be ten. We'll see. Hopefully we can do ten episodes with different researchers all based in different countries around the world highlighting the co their specific context of research and what they can do. So we need to thank a few people for it. So we'll thank the International Association of Cross Cultural Psychology for funding it, but Dr. Johannes Karl, who was actually a guest on the show ages ago, was probably the 14th episode. He was leading he was the one who suggested that we apply for this project. So he's in Switzerland and he does work. He does a lot of cross-cultural research. And we have a lined up a few guests already. So hopefully you'll see these episodes coming up in the next year or so. we have guests from Greenland, from the Middle East, from Chile, from Angola, and hopefully from from Pakistan and hopefully from other as well. ~ Kathr Katherine Silau from the Philippines was also has also accepted graciously to be a guest and she does public health research in the Philippines. So hopefully we can show a lot of perspectives, a lot of unique sort of challenges and also sort of differences which we might see across cultures in terms of conducting research, but also the approaches that they might use which potentially the Western world of ignores in many ways. Yeah, I'm really, really excited to run these. I think we'll do 10. It's going to happen, as many as possible. Yeah, thank you for the funding. It's exciting. yeah, Mm-hmm. that's going to be a very good series, I think very important. Yeah, so looking forward to it. Hopefully we'll continue we'll come back with a few more podcast episodes over the next so in mid August and so and then hopefully from September onwards we can get started with this and start getting episodes. We've titled it Voices from the Field and so hopefully that goes underway too. So I guess that's it. Unless Beth has any more updates for us for Nope, that's all good. Just living a good life, chilled, Yeah. Brilliant. Any updates from Moose at the back? Oh, should we come sit? He's just sleeping. I've got a little bed next to him, think. Moose. don't wake him up, don't wake him up. He's not sleeping. He's fine. He's fine. here he is. He's buzzing. He's a bit sad because I'm leaving the house a bit more, so maybe not as happy. ~ well, he's here now. He's happy. Yeah. Any updates from you, Sahir? I think that that grant's the biggest one.~ apart Mm-hmm. apart from that, just looking forward for my project. our implementation phase of it is starting in September. So just get all yeah, all guns blazing getting ready for that. So basically trying to see how we can better ask questions around alcohol and mental health in NHS and community organizations. So we've tried to develop some information and toolkits and guidelines which can help people and ~ help practitioners ask these questions because it's one of the most important things is being able to ask people about their mental health and their substance use and it's often overlooked even in community organizations. So try so hopefully that goes underway smoothly and the implementation works well. So that's what we're doing. But yeah, All right. that's all from us. Thank you. We'll see you guys in a few weeks' time. But until then, take care. Enjoy the sun, hopefully. Yeah.