Dr. Alan John Carson, MBCHB, MPHIL, MD, FRCPSYCH, FRCP

Prof Carson has worked as a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist in Edinburgh, split between the brain injury units at the Astley Ainslie Hospital and the Regional Neurosciences Unit at the Western General Hospital, for the last 18 years. He is also an Honorary Professor in Neuropsychiatry based in Clinical Brain Science at the University of Edinburgh. He is routinely involved in undergraduate and postgraduate training and teaching.  His primary research interest is in conversion (functional neurological) disorders but he has been involved in projects across a range of neuropsychiatric topics. The Functional Disorders Research group in Edinburgh, which he runs along with Jon Stone, has been among the field leaders over the last decade and produced influential work on clinical phenotype, classification, epidemiology and treatment. He has published over 150 papers but his favorite is getting a ‘Jackie style’ picture story into Practical Neurology.  Along with Mark Hallett, Chief of Human Motor Control NINDS, and Jon he published what they hope will be the landmark Handbook of Neurology- Functional Neurological Disorders (Elsevier 2016). This was followed by hosting the International Conference on Functional (Psychogenic) Neurological Disorders in Edinburgh; the largest ever interdisciplinary meeting on the topic. The profits from this meeting were used to launch a new international society the Functional Neurological Disorder Society. He holds a number of advisory posts in neuropsychiatry and was the Clinical Lead of the Scottish Managed Clinical Network for Acquired Brain Injury. He is the associate editor of Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and was the previous President of the British Neuropsychiatry Association. He was awarded the President’s Medal of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2017.