Our brains can be affected by illnesses and injury that result in impairments to thought process and behaviours. Neuro cognitive testing uses non-invasive methods to explore impairments to the brain and the resulting changes to cognition and behaviour. Testing methods include pen and paper tests, practical tasks and cutting edge technologies such as retinal scanning, eye tracking, EEG and computer-based assessments. Tests can precisely measure specific cognitive functions such as: memory, language, emotion, perception, attention, decision-making and executive functions. They can also be used to measure emotion, bodily responses, eating behaviour, sleep patterns and autonomic physical change. By understanding how these functions are affected by changes to the brain, and how we can change these functions in a positive way, we can work to develop supportive assessments and novel interventions.

Relevant Research

Some of our recent research projects are

• Role of sleep and vision: Abnormal changes to face perception in people with insomnia
• Understanding how the brain overrides aversive emotional memories
• Unique case studies: Investigating complete loss of reading and writing ability after brain injury
• Understanding how written language is affected by dementia
• Investigating whether eye changes can indicate brain injury using retinal imaging
• Distorted attention and impaired ability to inhibit behaviour in self harming groups
• Investigating how written language is affected by dementia

Our Services

Utilising our extensive range of specialist equipment and tests, and drawing on our wide-ranging expertise, we can

• offer a complete cognitive testing service across most age and patient groups
• provide resources and support to test the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving cognitive capacity, such as sport related brain injury, developmental disorders and dementia
• build new cognitive tests and neuro-training tasks, collaborate on data collection for next-generation measures and measure physiological and brain responses to stimuli.

Cutting-edge laboratories and equipment

We use a wide range of specialist equipment, including

• speech laboratory
• EEg laboratory
• eye-tracking laboratory (mobile and static)
• video recording and observation suite
• retinal imaging laboratory (mobile and static)
• food testing and food preparation laboratory
• psychophysiology laboratory
• extensive, well stocked test library including neuropsychological and cognitive tests, extensive questionnaires and measures of emotion