Person-Centred Neurosciences Society

04/08/2026

What the World Tells the Healing Brain: Reflections from a Living Experience

Brain injury — whether arising from a medical or vascular event, external physical trauma, surgery, illness, or other internal changes — can leave a person facing a future that feels deeply uncertain.

For some people, the path ahead may feel encouraging.

For others, it may feel much more difficult, frightening, or unclear.

So when we speak about healing, we need to be careful.

Healing does not always mean everything returns to how it was before.

It also does not mean pretending things are easy.

And it does not mean replacing medical treatment with positive thinking.

Sometimes healing means helping the body recover after surgery.

Or it may mean helping the brain find new rhythms.

For many people, it means reducing the daily signals that can keep a person braced, fearful, or overwhelmed.

And we should not forget the importance of creating the conditions for rest, dignity, connection, meaning, and the best possible living experience going forward.

Using my own experience, after returning home from brain tumour surgery, the healing brain is not only having to process scans, appointments, symptoms, and medical information.

It is also listening to the world around it.

A rushed room may say:
“You are under pressure.”

Noise, uncertainty or difficult conversations may say:
“Stay alert. Protect yourself.”

But a gentler environment may quietly say:
“You are safe enough now to repair, adapt and live.”

This is why the world around the person matters.

Not because it cures what medicine must treat.

But because the body and mind may heal, adapt and live more fully when the environment stops repeatedly confirming threat.

Perhaps one of the most important questions after diagnosis and surgery is not only:

“What is happening inside the brain?”

But also:

“What is the world telling the healing brain, every day?”

19/07/2026

What a Care(ing) Home this truly is!

This is what heartfelt care can look like; and yet it is so simpler.

Truly wonderful!

One to bring to our Christine Parker, in Tonbridge - a wonderful beacon of light, who shines so brightly, especially to raise so much awareness of dementia care across:

Tonbridge and Malling Tonbridge Cottage Hospital League of Friends Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust Tonbridge Old Fire Station Age UK Community Catalysts Kent Medway Neurological Network Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust Tonbridge Daily
Tonbridge School Tonbridge & Malling DFC
Tom Tugendhat

🙏❤️ - thank you Christine, you are a ⭐️ in more ways than people know.

24/06/2026

What does this picture say to you?

At first glance it looks dramatic.

Europe in 2026 appears to be burning compared with 1976.

Then when we look a little closer.

The temperatures shown are almost identical.

The numbers barely change, but the colours do.

It’s a reminder of how easily our eyes, minds and emotions can be influenced by presentation.

Not just in climate discussions.

In health.
In politics.
In the media.
And sometimes even in our relationships.

What we see is important.

But how something is presented can be just as important.

As an organisation that has spent many years exploring neuroscience and immunology, we’re wondering whether this image unintentionally illustrates something else entirely.

Perhaps the most significant climate change is not external.

Perhaps it is the change occurring within us.

Our internal climate.

The state of mind that can influence the state of the body.

A subject explored beautifully by Prof Ed Bullmore in his work on the relationship between inflammation, stress and mental health - captured in his “Inflamed Mind” book.

The image probably stimulate various question and thoughts. For us, is this one:

Am we responding to reality…

…or to the way reality has been presented to us?

We’d be interested to hear what you see and might think.

02/06/2026

To “see” beyond the senses is to…?

Modern neuroscience continues to reveal that much of what shapes our experience occurs before conscious awareness.

We often recognise a feeling before we can explain it.

We sense safety or danger before we can articulate why.

We notice harmony, rhythm and connection before we have the words to describe them.

Perhaps seeing beyond the senses is not about seeing more.

Perhaps it is about perceiving more deeply.

About recognising patterns, relationships and meanings that exist before they become fully visible.

What if some of the most important things we know are first felt, sensed or experienced?

What comes to mind when you read that question?

12/05/2026

At the Person-Centred Neurosciences Society, we are interested in how neuroscience can remain scientifically grounded while also staying close to living experience.

This short presentation explores a question that may matter deeply for the future of memory science, dementia care, rehabilitation and person-centred practice:

What if memory is not simply something stored away in the brain, but something living — re-formed through the brain, body, senses, emotions, relationships and environment?

Most of us grew up with the idea that memory is like a file in a cabinet. But contemporary neuroscience points towards a more dynamic picture.
Memory appears to involve distributed patterns, synaptic change, bodily state, cues, meaning and context — not one single place where a whole memory sits waiting to be retrieved.

That shift matters.

For conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, we clearly need rigorous biological science. But we also need to ensure that living experiences are not dismissed simply because they do not fit older models of memory.

When a person responds to music, recognises a familiar place, calms through touch, reconnects through rhythm, or lights up in response to a familiar voice, these moments should not be reduced to “just anecdote”.
They may be important clues.

Clues that the nervous system is still responding.
Clues that identity and connection may still be accessible.
Clues that memory may be more dynamic, embodied and relational than traditional metaphors have allowed.

One person who has watched the video shared this reflection:

“This was extremely interesting and a good expansion of my knowledge of memory. How our memories change as they are retrieved and reformed is incredibly interesting and so important to real-life contexts. Thank you for sharing!”

That phrase — “important to real-life contexts” — feels central.

If we are serious about making meaningful progress in dementia, memory and brain health, we may need both updated science and deeper humility towards lived experience.

This presentation is an invitation to look again at memory, personhood, regulation and what may still be possible.

We would be interested to hear what resonates, what challenges, and what this way of thinking opens up for you.

In this talk, The Neuroscience of Memory: A Living Experience, Neil Bindemann PhD explores a developing, evidence-informed perspective on memory that moves b...

06/04/2026

If we said we were sharing this to talk about “self regulation” what would your response be?

03/04/2026

We look forward to being with The Market House next Friday🎉

01/04/2026

Earlier today a post was shared that spoke of the significance of .

It spoke of “touch as something simple, a pressure applied to the surface of the body that either feels good or does not. Yet beneath that surface, something far more intricate begins to unfold, because touch is never merely contact. It is communication moving through a living information network.”

It feels important to also consider that:

“Once the body has learned “who” is touching them, the body can remember.

And that is why it may be more true to say “The body holds the score”, until it “knows better not to”.

And where does that “knowing” arise from?

From that same place that knows a loving touch?

And that may explain why massage is a powerful way to stay ‘in touch’ with a person, especially diagnosed with dementia. 🙏❤️

Dementia UK Christine Parker Tonbridge Cottage Hospital League of Friends The Market House Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust Community Catalysts Kent Neuro Rehab Expo Phil Bungay Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust Medway Neurological Network Tonbridge Daily Tom Tugendhat Tonbridge School Tonbridge and Malling Tonbridge School Fitness Centre Alzheimer's Society

30/03/2026

Our relationship with food - the depth of marinating

It’s extraordinary what thoughts, through visiting IFE, International Food & Drink Event, are stimulated!

Who knew the process of marinating food is a powerful way to experience how an environment alters our sensorial perception - conditioning/training/moulding the entire nervous system?

Something we are very likely to explore further, on the 10th April with our very own Chris Freer and The Lifestyle Health Foundation co-director Graham Stephens during our special lunchtime at the The Market House

To book your place go to www.eventdex.com/MHNeurocafe

28/03/2026

This is not uncommon

It is when we see headlines like these that we know along with The The Lifestyle Health Foundation and Global Lifestyle Health Alliance it is so important to campaign for controlled, as much as controlled drug trials.

Once we see such trials being mandatory, a more honest and clearer picture would be painted, in relation to the efficacy as well as safety and adverse events data. 🙏❤️