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Home / News from two major conferences
By Sara Da Silva Ramos, Senior Research Fellow at Brainkind
The NR-SIG-WFNR was first. It took place in Coimbra, Portugal on the 30th of June and 1st of July. Brainkind’s small “delegation” included me (SDSR), Dr Annmarie Burns, and Dr Mar Matarin.
We started bright and early on day one, with a presentation on benchmarking clinical outcomes in brain injury rehabilitation, right after the keynote talk “Fifty years of single-case research in neuropsychological rehabilitation: a personal journey and methodological review of the literature”, by the Chair of the NR-SIG-WFNR Committee, Professor Robyn Tate, and Professor Jennie Ponsford’s presentation of the results of a recent randomised controlled trial study on the efficacy of an early vocational intervention following traumatic injury.
Dr Mar Matarin presented in the same session on predictors of aggressive behaviour after severe brain injury, a topic that generated interest among some of the specialists in the field. Dr Annmarie Burns presented on both days of the conference.
On day one, the results of our study on the associations between brain injury and domestic abuse, and on day two, on the clinical outcomes of our Brain Injury Linkworker service in prisons. The latter, “Neurorehabilitation behind closed doors” won the award for the best Datablitz presentation of Day Two!
As usual at this event, the programme was brimming with studies evaluating innovations that will be useful in practice and there were many opportunities for networking over delicious food. However, Professor Tate’s talk did also show that there is a lot of work to be done in order to improve the volume and quality of single-case studies in our discipline, in terms of methodology, but also in reporting.
There are many resources to help researchers with this, and certainly no shortage of ideas, or indeed motivation! We returned home energised to do more research, and more importantly, to do it better.
As the name might suggest, the Global Neuropsychology Congress was a much larger event – it was jointly organised by the Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment (ASSBI), the Federation of European Societies of Neuropsychology (FESN), the International Neuropsychological Society (INS), and the Sociedad Latinoamericana de Neuropsicologia (SLAN) in a true meeting of minds from multiple neuroscientific areas.
Professor. Rudi Coetzer and I (SDSR) were panellists in a seminar on new perspectives on psychotherapy after brain injury organized by Dr Christian Salas (Universidade Diego Portales, Chile), alongside Dr Giles Yeates, who talked about supporting sexuality following brain injury, including a UK-based study evaluating a new approach to couples therapy, which is looking for volunteers to take part .
Our colleague, Dr Miles Rogish, presented on the results of a study exploring the cross-cultural differences on the impact of autism diagnoses on parents’ experiences.
One major positive aspect of attending a large congress like this, is the opportunity to share, on an international platform, the research Brainkind is doing, as well as to network with colleagues from all over the world and increase our organisation’s external impact.
Another positive aspect is the chance to hear from international experts on topics outside our areas of expertise. This helps us with thinking outside the box – a first step to pursuing innovative solutions to known problems.
Now that the flash of July is nearly over, we get the opportunity to stop and think about what, and how, we might put some of what we learned into good practice.
Follow the links below to learn more about the two events, and some of the research presented, or feel free to get in touch with research@brainkind.org with your questions.
