Professor David Linden

Professor David Linden talks about BRAINTRAIN - a new technology to help people train their own brain - and how CUBRIC, the University's multi-million pound brain imaging centre was set up.

Watch David's interview on YouTube

Transcript

"BRAINTRAIN is about a new technology that uses imaging signals to enable people to train their own brain activity.

One example of BRAINTRAIN that we are using at the moment is a trial for people with alcohol dependencies, where they are training to drive down their alcohol craving responses in the brain through this neurofeedback training procedure.

BRAINTRAIN is the only European consortium looking at this new technology. We’ve brought together leading groups from several countries - both from industry and from academia. It is really an internationally leading group of researchers that we have the pleasure of co-ordinating here from Cardiff.

The most surprising thing has been the way in which we have been able to set up this imaging centre. A number of researchers from our imaging community went to the University and said, “Look we’ve got this idea about really increasing our capacity here, we’ve got great research, great researchers but it will require substantial investment,” and the University essentially said, “Yes let’s see your proposal - we’ll consider it”.
And with support from the University, from the Welsh Government, from the European Funding Office and various other funders it has been possible to set up this quite amazing facility which has become one of the biggest in the world.

Cardiff is a major cultural centre, it’s got not just Cardiff University but several other universities. It’s both a major international city and a very friendly place to live."