Neurological perspectives on writing and the fascinating underlying processes

Anna Barnett is a Professor of Psychology based in the Centre for Psychological Research at Oxford Brookes University. She teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, primarily in the area of developmental psychology.

Anna's research interests lie in the general field of motor development. Within this area, she pursues two different strands of research. The first has very practical applications, involving the development of suitable tools to assess motor skill. This has involved the re-standardisation of a test of general motor competence (the Movement ABC-2) for children aged 3-16 years. She has also developed a test of handwriting speed (the DASH) for children aged 9-16 years, with an extension for students aged 17-25 years (DASH17+). The second strand of her research focuses on various aspects of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) - including diagnosis and assessment in children and adults with this condition and exploration of the genetic contribution to motor difficulties.

Anna also has a special interest in the teaching and learning of handwriting skill, as an important component of the broader skill of writing. Her work in this area includes surveys of policy and practice in primary schools and examinations of handwriting in individuals with developmental disorders such as DCD and dyslexia.

Olivia Afonso is A Senior Lecturer in Psychology based in the Centre for Psychological Research at Oxford Brookes University. Her research interests concern language processing in general and the writing production process in particular.

In her investigations, she addresses the cognitive processes underlying typical and atypical spelling and handwriting in both children and adults. She is also interested in the differences between handwriting and typewriting from a cognitive and developmental perspective.

Her research is mainly based on the analysis of online measures of the written response, such as written latencies, writing durations, pen pressure and in-air pen duration and trajectory.

Olivia teaches research methods and cognitive aspects of spelling and handwriting development and writing difficulties at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Anna is a clinical lecturer fascinated by the neural control of movement and how this is disturbed in movement disorders. In her talk, she will discuss writer’s cramp, an enigmatic disorder that results in an inability to write yet normal dexterous performance in other manual tasks. She will shed light on why the hand only malfunctions during the act of writing and discuss innovative methods that attempt to rewire the corrupted neuronal engrams within the brain.

James M. Heilman is a Canadian emergency physician, Wikipedian, and advocate for the improvement of Wikipedia's health-related content. He encourages other clinicians to contribute to the online encyclopedia.

With the Wikipedia username Doc James, Heilman has been a long term contributor to WikiProject Medicine and a volunteer Wikipedia administrator. He was the president of Wikimedia Canada between 2010 and 2013, and founded and was formerly the president of Wiki Project Med Foundation. He is also the founder of WikiProject Medicine's Medicine Translation Task Force. In June 2015, he was elected to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, a position which he held until he was removed on December 28, 2015. Heilman was re-elected to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in May 2017.

Heilman is a clinical assistant professor at the department of emergency medicine at the University of British Columbia, and the former head of the department of emergency medicine at East Kootenay Regional Hospital in Cranbrook, British Columbia, where he lives.