A busy month for… Hugo Spiers

Hugo Spiers tells us: 'It was a crazy experience announcing the first results from Sea Hero Quest, our mobile game where anyone can help scientists fight dementia. We guessed we would get some media attention after the interest we'd had at launch, but this time the coverage was larger and more intense.

'The day of my talk at Neuroscience 2016 I woke at 6am in San Diego, gave the talk at 9.30am, then a flight to London, where I was whisked (after a quick shave) to BBC World News for interview. It was somewhat disorienting talking about disorientation on the BBC after all that.

'I was unsure how the gender difference and country differences might be presented by the press – e.g. "Brits beat French and Germans at navigation" – but the coverage was amazingly well considered (e.g. see tinyurl.com/hmbp97w). It was also amazing to see Chelsea Clinton tweet the story to her 1.24 million followers!'

Some of Dr Spiers' (University College London) research on navigation, with Anna Jafarpour, was covered recently on our Research Digest. See tinyurl.com/jhmmruz