SPECIAL glasses that can help stroke victims have been developed by researchers in the region.

The glasses are one of the first fruits of work by Durham University scientists, in collaboration with colleagues in France.

It is hoped that other inventions will flow from the work of the North-East scientists.

Now the research team is a appealing for healthy volunteers in their sixties or seventies, as well as people who have suffered a stroke, to help them in their pioneering work.

The special prismatic glasses were developed to try to offset the effects of "spatial neglect", a mysterious condition which affects some stroke patients who are damaged on the right side of their brain.

Patients with left side brain damage often have difficulties in speaking and understanding what people are saying.

Those who have right side brain damage sometimes find that they ignore things on their left side.

Stroke patients who put on the glasses find that their visual world is shifted sideways slightly, which helps them to see and behave more normally.

While this only lasts for hours, or sometimes days, it can help to kick-start rehabilitation work by physiotherapists.

Professor David Milner, who is leading the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit team at the new Wolfson Institute in Stockton, said: "Stroke patients damaged on the right-hand side of the brain often act as if the left-hand side of their world is no longer there."

This problem makes it difficult for physiotherapists to help stroke patients overcome their movement difficulties.

Volunteers who come forward will undergo tests at the university's laboratories in Stockton or Durham. It is hoped that the work will eventually provide new ways to help people with brain damage.

l This week is Brain Awareness Week.