Videos

Suppose you have to choose between these dishes: will you go for the pizza, pasta carbonara, or rather the salad or the piece of fish? Well, did you know that the camera perspective in these photos has an effect on your (un)healthy food choices? Eva Meersseman (Ghent University) explains how this works.

What if your life were in danger every time you took the stairs or drove a car? This applies to epilepsy patients: an epileptic seizure on the stairs or behind the wheel could have a very bad outcome. That is why Jana Desloovere (UGent) is working on new and more effective treatment. In this way she hopes that in the future people with epilepsy can drive a car or climb the stairs without worries.

Did you know that besides basic physical needs, such as sleeping and eating, you also have basic psychological needs? You will not die immediately if these psychological needs are not fulfilled, but it can make you very unhappy. Daphne van den Boogaard explains what these needs are and how you can train to manage your own happiness.

Millions of people worldwide suffer from 'invisible' diseases such as chronic widespread pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, which makes patients feel ill for days or even weeks after a small effort, such as washing their hair. Jolien Hendrix (VUB - KU Leuven) tries to understand these diseases by looking at epigenetics. Epi what?! Well, you can see this as DNA paperclips as Jolien explains vividly in this video!

Family parties are a nightmare for those who wear hearing aids. With all those people talking at the same time, they find it difficult to hold a conversation. Engineer Simon Geirnaert is working on a solution. With his brain-controlled hearing aids, he also wants to help people with a hearing aid to communicate with each other.

Do you remember baby Pia? She suffered from the rare muscle disease AMS and the medicine to save her cost a whopping €1.9 million. If you were the Minister of Health, would you pay for Pia's medicine? Even if that meant there was no budget left for another medicine that might save 100 people?

During a stroke, every second counts to save as many brain cells as possible. Intervention is only possible within a narrow time window of a few hours because late treatment can lead to serious complications. Is there nothing more we can do for these 'late' patients? There is, says neurologist trainee Lauranne Scheldeman!

"Each person is unique. So why do we still treat every woman with ovarian cancer the same way?" Liselore Loverix (KU Leuven - FWO) examines patient by patient and looks for errors in the DNA of their tumour cells. In this way, before treatment starts, she identifies which patient would benefit from a new, targeted therapy based on cancer drugs.

Together you are always stronger. Unfortunately, this also applies to some microbes, which can conspire to make us seriously ill. Microbiologist Katrien Van Dyck is investigating such a conspiracy between a fungus and a microbe that work together to cause a serious infection. By studying the interaction between the two, she hopes to find out how we can break their alliance.

Thanks to new radiotherapy techniques, more and more patients with head and neck cancer are surviving. But for 70% of them, this radiation causes chronic swallowing problems, making it difficult to eat and drink. Hanne Massonet hopes to help them enjoy food and drink again by training their tongue, mouth, and throat muscles.

Do you ever stress about presentations? Imagine if you felt that stress all the time. Well, that is the case with some individuals, such as children with autism. They find social interactions to be frightening and sometimes even threatening. Can a nasal spray with oxytocin relieve them of that stress? That is what Nicky Daniels is investigating at KU Leuven.

After a stroke, many people suffer from swallowing problems (dysphagia), due to damage to brain areas responsible for controlling and coordinating the swallowing process. Can electrical stimulation help them restore the brain control of swallowing, to eat and drink comfortably again? That's what Marthe Everaert is looking into in her PhD.