“No John…I’m not proud of or happy to have epilepsy, I’m not going to celebrate having this awful, restrictive condition that negatively impacts not just my life, but the lives of millions worldwide. Do you think that I should celebrate it if I had, for instance, a limb amputation? I don’t understand…!” 😂

It turned out, very, unfortunately, that Joe’s mum had had a brain tumour. But, due to marvellous treatment, all of the tumour was gone (well, fingers crossed) and she just had to take some Anti-Seizure Medications. Oh. The joyful epilepsy rears its ugly head…

The focus of my lab is working on finding new treatments for epilepsy, both genetic and acquired epilepsy. As for my background, I am a biotechnologist. I studied in Milan Biotechnology, and then I did a master's in Vienna, both in Italy, on Medical Biotechnology. Then I did also my Ph.D. in Experimental Neuroscience in Italy.

Research into epilepsy excites me.

I’ve always loved the sciences, but, understandably, I grew a particular interest in neurology and neuroscience. I wasn’t able to study both at school, let alone at university: the negative impacts of anti-seizure medications (ASMs), seizures themselves, and mental health comorbidities on my cognitive function were just too much.

Deirdre* felt a need to announce that she’d experienced her first, self-diagnosed; nocturnal, tonic-clonic, epileptic seizure. I can comprehend why she self-diagnosed, but doing so isn’t useful. It’s potentially dangerous.

Have you ever met someone who truly believed that they were an expert in their field, but who you found to be relatively uneducated* on the topic in question?

It can be ourselves, a politician, a family member, a colleague, some random from Facebook...

I’m talking about The Dunning-Kruger effect; a cognitive bias hypothesis described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger.

Plants are incredible for improving mood. I personally discovered this by chance. 7 years ago I was very unwell, but I purchased a few plants. All I can say is: “Wow”. Back then and to this day, they have continued to help me chill, distract me from awful thoughts, and give me focus.

It’s important to recognise that we should not define people by their title or their profession. After all, we meet people of the same job title (whether that be doctor, cleaner, plumber, blogger (!), or whatever), some of whom we like, and some of whom we think: “urgh”.