Francis McGlone

Professor in Neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University

Francis McGlone is Professor in Neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University, Visiting Professor at University of Liverpool, and Aalto University (Finland). As a neuroscientist he’s driven to find out how brains work – a daunting task – but realising that the only way we will ever fix broken-brains is to understand how and why they break in the first place. This has led his research to focus on how early life experiences shape who we become. What is emerging from this research is that a key driver in this process is a recently discovered system of sensory nerves in the skin that have evolved to respond to a gentle caress, called c-tactile afferents. The pandemic has exposed them!