On Wednesday 28 March 2018, JIAS hosted a one-day workshop on ‘Illustrating the Brain’ presented by Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University in the United Kingdom. The workshop formed part of a series entitled ‘Brain Matters: Accelerating Southern Africa Neuroscience’. The workshop was fully subscribed, and was very successful.

About the workshop

‘Illustrating the Brain’ was a one-day workshop (based on Bangor University’s ‘Visceral Mind’ programme) aimed at postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers as well as academic staff with a background and interest in cognition, emotion, and mental health.

It covered  the fundamentals of human anatomy by adopting the classical approach of ‘anatomy through drawing and rehearsal’. It involved sessions of anatomical drawing, followed by supervised observation of brain prosections. Students were provided with a diagrammatic workshop, and practised the drawing and labelling of core brain structures. They also visited the the Hunterian Museum of Anatomy at Wits University.

About Professor Turnbull

Professor Oliver Turnbull is a neuropsychologist and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Neuropsychology and Pro Vice Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at Bangor University in the United Kingdom.

His interests include emotion-based learning and the experience we describe as ‘intuition’; the role of emotion in false beliefs, especially in neurological patients; and the neuroscience of psychotherapy. He is the author of a number of scientific articles on these topics, and (together with Professor Mark Solms) of the popular science text  The Brain and the Inner World. He is a previous editor of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis.

The ‘Brain Matters: Accelerating Southern African Neuroscience’ seminar series is sponsored by the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development at Wits University and JIAS, and supported by the Wits Cortex Club and the Southern African Neuroscience Society.