News

The Centre for Brain and Behaviour (CBB) held an official launch event "Mind, Tech, and Wellbeing" in Octagon, QMUL, on the 29th September, 2025. Attended by more than 100 staff members, PhD students, and external guests from psychology and neuroscience-related industries, charities and science media, the event provided an opportunity to celebrate the Centre's innovations and impact.

The event started with an introduction from the leadership team, Dr Valdas Noreika and Professor Rachael Bedford, laying out the CBB's vision: "To advance our understanding of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour, aiming to address urgent societal challenges" and key research themes. This was followed by presentations from prominent academics within the CBB, including Professor Rachael Bedford's work on the impact of digital media on infant sleep and wellbeing; Dr Annemieke Apergis-Schoute's interventions for helping OCD patients; Dr Lucie Charles' research program on decision-making, metacognition and misinformation. Professor Isabelle Mareschal's research on how adversities, war, displacement and climate change, affect mental health in children and adolescents; Professor Lars Chittka's findings on the perception and intelligence of bees; and Professor Caroline Brennan explaining how zebrafish genetics and neuroscience can help us to understand the human brain and psychiatric conditions.

Talks were followed by an interactive poster session with more than 20 academics from the CBB introducing their research programs. Dr Elisabetta Versace and the Prepared Minds lab gave engaging demos of their work, while Professor Andrea Benucci demonstrated a fully automated setup with voluntary head fixation that he and his team developed to train mice in complex perceptual tasks. External guests also took part in guided lab tours where they got up close with the latest research conducted in the Child Development Lab, the Somatosensory Lab, the Exercise Lab, and the Sleep Lab. These and other facilities enable our research into topics such as early child development, mental health and sleep deprivation, and the relationship between physical movement and cognition and social interaction.

Centre lead Dr Valdas Noreika said: "It was a pleasure to show our guests all the ways we are working together to address urgent societal challenges and ultimately improve human wellbeing. We are excited to strengthen the existing and build new collaborations with industries and charities, which is helping us to bridge from the basic research to applied psychology and neuroscience."