Here’s to Another Year of Citizen Science!

This January, the Neureka Team are reflecting on 2021 – a year that was full of major challenges, but also big achievements around the world that showcase the power of charity, teamwork, and community spirit. It is incredible what humans can achieve when we work together. At Neureka, thanks to your time and effort, we’ve hit some exciting milestones this past year, take a look below...

The Neureka Project featured on Irish National Television

Lead scientist, Dr Claire Gillan, and The Neureka Project were featured on the docuseries ‘Change Makers’ on RTE One. The show focused on ‘Pattern Wise’, a tool in the app where you can track and understand your habits.

This episode will be made available on neureka.ie in the coming weeks and our Irish Citizen Scientists can catch up this week on the RTE Player. Tune in to see how your contribution is helping us create a clearer picture of what keeps the brain healthy!

One MILLION for Multi-Mood!

That’s right! Thanks to all the Citizen Scientists across the globe we have now collected over ONE MILLION mood ratings through Multi-Mood! This data helps understand how best to tackle serious mental health problems like depression, but also gives clues as to what makes some people resilient. We do this through an approach called ‘network analysis’. The network approach allows us to investigate how your mood, thoughts and experiences relate to each other over time. By creating a network of your Multi-Mood data, we can see the links between all the questions that you answered. For example, do feelings of guilt lead to feeling down? We can also show these links in a really nice graph, check out some of the preliminary findings by Neureka researcher Sean Kelley:

This graph shows a network of how different moods trigger one another. It is thought that the more connected someone’s network is, the more likely they are to experience mental health problems. This is because one mood (e.g. feeling sad) leads to activation of others, and is more likely to reinforce itself over time. Through Multi-Mood, we aim to understand these dynamics and develop new interventions for depression.

The Neureka Team is expanding!

In 2021, we were lucky enough to welcome some new researchers to our team! This includes two PhD researchers, Kelly Donegan and Anna Rosická, and postdoctoral researcher, Vanessa Teckentrup. Anna’s research will use data from the Risk Factors Challenge to look at the science behind aging and dementia, while Kelly will be studying the science behind habit formation in a new Science Challenge that will be available later this year. Vanessa will take the lead on an exciting project with SilverCloud Health that will explore dynamic interactions mental health and cognition in individuals undergoing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

None of this would be possible without your ongoing support and commitment to Citizen Science. We’re excited to bring you more exciting updates in 2022 including new Science Challenges and a new look for Neureka – watch this space!