The Academic Senate of the Faculty of Medicine MU has approved the budget for 2025
At its regular meeting on March 25, 2025, the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, approved the budget for 2025.
Brain Awareness Week gave a glimpse under the hands of neurosurgeons and into the labs
Masaryk University is becoming more involved in Brain Awareness Week. This year, it prepared a comprehensive five-day programme.
Five programme afternoons, fifteen lectures, two excursions and more than eight hundred participants. Such were the numbers of this year's Brain Awareness Week at Masaryk University, which involved the departments of the Faculty of Medicine and both faculty hospitals, experts from the Central European Institute of Technology and researchers from the Faculty of Arts. Thus, the participation was higher than ever before, both from the organisation and from the point of view of the visitors. "Neurosurgeons, neurologists and neuroscientists were involved in the development of the programme, so we managed to cover topics related to the brain from all sides," says Dr. Václav Vybíhal from the Department of Neurosurgery of the University Hospital Brno and the Faculty of Medicine, who helped coordinate the programme, as he did last year.
He also contributed as a lecturer himself, introducing the participants to the specific neurosurgical treatment of hydrocephalus, i.e. the increased accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the cavities of the brain. He was one of those who supplemented his presentation with real audiovisual recordings from hospital practice, or directly from the operating room and from under the surgical microscope. "I have been recording all my operations already for a while," said Professor Martin Smrčka, Head of the Department of Neurosurgery, in the discussion after his lecture How to get inside the brain and not harm the patient. Whether they were lay people, students or fellow doctors, everyone watched with bated breath.
However, the Brain Awareness Week at Masaryk University was not only a unique opportunity to look under the hands of neurosurgeons. The opening lecture of Dr. Dáša Bohačiaková from the Department of Histology and Embryology of the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University, who presented her research on neurodegenerative diseases carried out on the so-called cerebral organoids, aroused great interest. Many questions were then raised by the practically oriented lectures, whether they were focused on cognitive training or on the possibilities opened by artificial intelligence in the diagnosis and therapy of speech disorders. Thursday's workshops focused on selected neurological diseases from the perspective of female patients and were truly interactive.
Wednesday's excursion to the HUME Lab for Experimental Humanities at the Faculty of Arts and Friday's offer at CEITEC aroused similar interest as the programme at the Faculty of Medicine. The Central European Institute of Technology conceived the Brain Awareness Week not only as an opportunity to open up neuroscience topics through lectures, but also as an Open Day of the Multimodal and Functional Imaging Laboratory. This year marks the tenth anniversary of its operation. "The lectures and visits to the shared laboratory were very interesting for visitors from the general and professional public as well as MUNI students and staff and raised many questions in the audience leading to partial discussions," says Tereza Kučerová from the CEITEC Events Department.
We can look forward to lectures during the internationally commemorated Brain Awareness Week in March next year. It is already certain that Masaryk University will join the awareness-raising event!
