Great medical breakthroughs have almost always relied on volunteers who are willing to take part in early experiments and trials, and in recent years in Scotland many hundreds of people have taken part in research into everything from ageing and asthma to depression.

Now another hundred volunteers are needed for a study at Glasgow University's Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology that will look into the early signs of mental illness.

The potential benefits of the study are huge. Using magneto-encephalography equipment, the researchers will measure small changes in the volunteers' brains with a view to spotting characteristics that can be used to identify people who could become seriously ill. The research could also help discover new ways to treat mental illness.

For those who take part, it will be a completely safe process; for the rest of us, it offers an opportunity to discover more about the most complex of organs but also the least understood. In the words of Dr Peter Uhlhaas, one of the researchers, the brain is like a complicated orchestra. The study at Glasgow may help us all learn how to conduct it better.