In November 2002, a team of researchers at the institute led by Professor John Collinge published the results of a study which showed that the number of cases of
CJD caused by the consumption of
BSE-infected beef may have been higher than previously calculated and that BSE, in addition to causing
variant CJD (vCJD), may also have caused some cases of "sporadic" CJD. In February 2004, a team of researchers at the institute led by Tania Singer published research showing that it is possible for one human to feel another's pain and that the same regions of the brain are activated in the empathizer and the empathisee. In July 2005, a team of researchers at the institute led by Davina Bristow published the results of research funded by the
Wellcome Trust in
Current Biology which demonstrated that parts of the human brain are temporarily "switched off" when blinking. In September 2005, a team of researchers at the institute led by Victor Tybulewicz at the National Institute for Medical Research and Professor
Elizabeth Fisher from the institute published the results of a study in which they had been able to introduce most of a human chromosome into mice, producing the most successful recreation of
Down's syndrome to date. In August 2007, a team of researchers at the institute led by Henrik Ehrsson published research in
Science which was the first to describe how it is possible to use cameras to trick the human brain into thinking that a person is elsewhere in a room than they really are. In February 2011, a team of researchers at the institute led by Nick Wood published the results of a genetic study which had identified five new genes linked to
Parkinson's disease. In September 2015, Prof
Sarah Tabrizi began the first human trial of a 'gene silencing'
antisense oligonucleotide drug, IONIS-HTTRx, for the
neurodegenerative disease
Huntington's disease at the institute's Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre. ==Notable researchers==