A History of Neuroscience at Newcastle: 1956-1973
1956
Professor Sir Martin Roth FRS (1917-2006, pictured) is appointed to the Chair of Psychological Medicine (1956-1977). The most respected and successful psychiatrist of his generation, Roth established Newcastle as one of the leading centres of psychiatric clinical research in Britain and founded two main areas of research which remain to this day: psychogeriatrics and the phenotypic characterisation of affective disorders. Many of the major concepts in psychogeriatrics, especially in dementia, were conceived in Newcastle. Roth made major contributions in distinguishing subtypes of mental illness arising in late life, including elucidating the pathological distinctness of the clinical syndromes of cerebrovascular dementia caused by strokes and Alzheimer's disease arising from abnormal protein formations in the brain. He conducted important clinico-pathological studies with Bernard Tomlinson and Garry Blessed (consultant psychogeriatrician 1966-1988), devising the first scales for measuring dementia and demonstrating the quantitative relationship between cognitive levels and extent of brain damage, including expression of Alzheimer's abnormal proteins. With others Roth specified diagnostic criteria for syndromes of depression. For his scientific achievements in psychiatry Roth became one of only three psychiatrists to be appointed FRS (the first being Sigmund Freud).
1956
Roth appoints Clair Gurney and Alan Kerr as Senior Research Officers to a newly-formed MRC Group to which Roger Garside (Senior Lecturer, later Reader, in Clinical Psychology) gave invaluable advice on the application of multivariate statistical analysis. David Kay (Research Assistant then Consultant, 1961-76) later joined from the MRC Unit at Graylingwell Hospital, Chichester where he had started work on classification of old age mental disorders with Roth. In 1976 Kay was appointed the first Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Tasmania, returning to Newcastle to continue research on old-age disorders after retirement in 1983.
1956
Miller forms the Department of Neurology at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He initially appointed Walton, as his assistant specialising in neuromuscular disease, and Kurt Schapira, as research fellow to work on multiple sclerosis. As a neuropsychiatrist Schapira would later work in psychiatry with Roth on the clinical and prognostic relationship between anxiety disorders and depressive illnesses, retiring in 1989.
1957
Professor John (‘Hank’) Hankinson (1919-2007, pictured) joins Rowbotham and Laurie Lassman in the Department of Neurosurgery, eventually becoming the first Professor of Neurosurgery (1972-84). Having learned stereotaxic surgery from the pioneers Luis Amador (Chicago) and Lars Leksell (Karolinska Institute, Sweden), Hankinson's principal interest was in functional neurosurgery, especially for the relief of rigidity and tremor in Parkinson’s disease. During the 1970s Hankinson collaborated with Alan McComas and Peter Wilson to make real time electrophysiological recordings using steel electrodes from the human brain in conscious patients to assist the functional mapping of the brain prior to surgery. He also developed the ventricular puncture method for relief of intracranial pressure.
1959-1965
Miller coordinates the first survey of multiple sclerosis in the country. Miller and Schapira publish two influential papers in the British Medical Journal on the aetiology of multiple sclerosis. This was followed by a series of papers during the early 1960s in The Lancet and British Medical Journal on controlled trials in the management of multiple sclerosis using aspirin, prednisolone, gammaglobulin, tuberculin, and tranylcypromine.
1961
The Demyelinating Disease Unit is established initially through local philanthropic funding and then as the MRC Group on Demyelinating Diseases. Initially based at 13 Framlington Place (pictured), from 1961 -73 the unit was directed by Professor Ephraim (‘EJ’) Field (1915-2002). Field was a graduate of Newcastle (1938) and had worked in Bristol before being appointed as a neuropathologist in Miller’s Department of Neurology in 1958 and becoming Professor of Experimental Neuropathology in 1967. The Demyelinating Disease Unit was acknowledged to be one of the major centres in the world for research into multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases like scrapie, and pursued work on identifying biomarkers of disease. In his 12 years as Director of the Unit, Field was prolific publishing many high profile papers, including 12 letters to Nature and 34 letters to The Lancet. In 1973-4 Field was succeeded as Unit Director by Professor A.M. Thomson.
1962
Rowbotham and Walton create the Regional Neurosciences Centre (pictured) at Newcastle General Hospital. The first of its kind in the country, the centre combined neurology, neurosurgery, neuroradiology, neurophysiology and experimental laboratories to provide a comprehensive centre for treatment and research. Walton’s Department of Neurology becomes a leading centre for research on neuromuscular disorders. The multi-disciplinary research group would go on to make major contributions to inherited muscle disorders, initiating genetics and molecular cell pathology of muscle disease, and publishing a number of papers in Nature.
1962
Creation of the MRC Research Group on the Relation of Functional to Organic Psychiatric Illness under the directorship of Roth.
1963
Newcastle becomes a university independent from Durham.
1964
Kay and Roth publish two seminal papers in the British Journal of Psychiatry which indicated that dementia was a major epidemiological entity in the elderly.
1964
Professor Israel (‘Issy’) Kolvin (1929-2002, pictured) is appointed as consultant in charge of the Nuffield Psychology and Psychiatry Unit and lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine. He later became one of the first holders of a chair in child psychiatry (1977-91). Kolvin was among those to pioneer the move of child and adolescent psychiatry from being dominated by psychoanalytic theories to empirical research investigating the nature, extent, and causes of emotional and behavioural disorders. He turned the Nuffield Unit into one of the world’s foremost university departments of child and adolescent psychiatry. Kolvin took advantage of the Thousand Family Study (see 1947) to conduct longitudinal epidemiological investigations of the psychosocial factors which either perpetuate or protect against a negative outcome across generations. He also conducted groundbreaking work on evaluating the effectiveness of different forms of psychological interventions delivered in schools.
1964
Professor David Shaw is appointed to Miller’s Department of Neurology. Shaw was one of the earliest neurologists to develop an interest in cerebrovascular disease and stroke. He became Professor of Neurology (1981-1990) and later made major contributions to medical education, becoming Clinical Sub-Dean (1970-1981) and then Dean of Medicine (1981-1990).
1965
Alan McComas (Honorary Lecturer 1962-1965; Lecturer in Physiology 1965-1973) and David Barwick are appointed to the Regional Neurosciences Centre to establish a Clinical Neurophysiology Department. McComas was recruited to develop research into skeletal muscle and its innervation having trained with Bernard Katz at University College London.
1966
Muscular Dystrophy Research Laboratories open adjacent to the Regional Neurosciences Centre and programme funding from the MRC starts that lasts until 1981. Research on the neuromuscular innervation was extended with the appointment of Professor John Harris who would later hold the Chair of Experimental Neurology (1979-2005) and who was joined in 1975 by Professor Clarke Slater (later Senior Lecturer 1985; Professor of Neuroscience 2000-2005).
1966
Landmark publications in Nature (1966) and British Journal of Psychiatry (1968) by Tomlinson, Blessed and Roth demonstrating the relationship between Alzheimer’s-type neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques and measures of dementia.
1966-1992
Until 1963 the Department of Psychology (first constituted in 1952) was primarily based in Durham under the leadership of Professor Frederick Smith (1912-2006), with few staff based in Newcastle. A newly independent department was created in Newcastle under the successive headships of Professor John Brown (1966-69), Professor Roy Davis (1969-73) and Professor Max Hammerton (1973-92, pictured). Work in animal behaviour, particularly birds, was started in the 1970s with the appointment of John Lazarus, and continues in Newcastle today with the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution.
1968
The MRC Demyelinating Diseases Unit moves to a new building at Newcastle General Hospital (pictured) to provide modern research facilities. The unit successively became the MRC Neuroendocrinology Unit (1979-1989) then the MRC Neurochemical Pathology Unit (1989-2000), and was a major part of the Institute for Health of the Elderly created in 1994. The building was demolished in 2006 and was replaced by the Edwardson Building (opened 2008).
1971
Roth is elected the founding president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
1971
McComas publishes a landmark paper using electrophysiological methods to estimate the number of motor units in a human muscle. This work was in part conducted by Peter Fawcett (Consultant and Honorary Senior Lecturer 1971-2008) who would go on to develop one of the leading Clinical Neurophysiology Departments in the country.
1972
Roth, Schapira, Garside, Kerr, and Clair Gurney (1933-2006, pictured) publish a series of landmark papers in the British Journal of Psychiatry on the classification of affective disorders and the relationship between anxiety and depressive illnesses, using detailed information gained from structured interviews.
1973
Professor Walter (‘Wally’) Bradley (Foundation Professor of Experimental Neurology 1973-1977 funded by Action Research for the Crippled Child) publishes seminal studies on the abnormalities of peripheral nerves in murine models of muscular dystrophy.
1973
Professor David Bates first appointed to the Department of Neurology later becoming Chair of Clinical Neurology (2002-2009). During his career in Newcastle Bates would be involved in many multicentre trails for treatment of multiple sclerosis.
1973
Department of Psychology moves from 7 Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle to new premises in the Ridley Building (pictured). The administrative base of psychology has remained in the building to today, although research has moved to other buildings on campus.
1973-1975
Development of the Department of Neuropathology with the appointment of Professor Robert Perry as consultant (appointed 1973; MRC Clinical Scientist and Senior Lecturer 1980; Clinical Professor of Neuropathology 1999-2009, pictured) and Professor Elaine Perry (appointed 1975; MRC Scientist 1989; Professor of Neurochemical Pathology 1995-2009). Human brain tissue for histological and histochemical analysis had been available since early 1960s but Robert Perry developed this into a resource for more detailed neurochemistry. The brain bank (now called the brain tissue resource) is one of the world’s most well characterised brain banks on neurodegenerative diseases and has led to many discoveries in relation to neurodegenerative diseases.
