Speaker: Dr Jessica Eccles

Dr Eccles, who studied medicine at Cambridge and Oxford, is a researcher and a neurodevelopmental psychiatrist specialising in the links between brain and body, especially as they relate to flexible joints (hypermobility). As well as her University position she works in the Sussex NHS Neurodevelopmental Service where she and colleagues have set up the world’s first Neurodivergent Brain Body Clinic. She has been working on the intersect between hypermobility and neurodivergence since she first came to work at Brighton and Sussex medical school in Neuroscience in 2009. Alongside all things brain and body she is interested in photography

Brain and body are dynamically coupled. Dr Eccles believes that the false dichotomy between body and brain hinders our holistic understanding of human experience, holds back clinical practice and research and further perpetuates stigma. She will use the presence of a common bodily variant of connective tissue (joint hypermobility) to demonstrate such brain-body links and how they this may relate to neurodivergent conditions including ADHD. She will draw on her prize-winning work in the field of hypermobility/EDS. She hopes to encourage curiosity and challenge stereotypes.

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