Picture a physicist. Do you imagine someone madly scribbling equations about nuclear energy or black holes? What about someone doing research on dementia? Or figuring out better ways to do high-tech medical imaging? These are the sorts of things a Magnetic Resonance...
Our Dementia Prevention Research Clinics (DPRC) just celebrated an exciting success. After months of extensive preparations in Auckland and with the help of DPRC Tissue Banks in Christchurch and Dunedin, Dr Erin Cawston and her DPRC Tissue Bank team couriered off some...
Brain Research New Zealand is very pleased to report that it has made a further set of grant awards, for short-term projects running in the first half of 2021. While these grants are necessarily short-term due to the Centre of Research Excellence winding up after June...
Associate Prof Joanna Williams’ work at the University of Otago is all about blood – and the clues hidden within that might tell us what is going on in the brain. Using the blood as a window into the brain, Joanna aims to find biomarkers that can help us diagnose...
Assoc Prof Ping Liu has been researching L-arginine, a highly versatile semi-essential amino acid, for almost 20 years – and it doesn’t sound like she’ll get tired of it anytime soon. L-arginine is widely present in our bodies, including our brains. What makes...
Dr Meg Spriggs wasn’t always interested in science. “At school I was very much an arts kid,” she says, “and I dropped science in fifth form.” But during her psychology undergraduate at the University of Otago everything changed. Meg was introduced to EEG...
In her lab at the University of Otago, Brain Research New Zealand (BRNZ) Principal Investigator, Associate Professor Ping Liu, asks some big questions. Using a host of different techniques, she is exploring the neurobiology of age-related cognitive decline,...
Helen’s love for science started when she was very young, a spark ignited by her dad. “We would sit down and he would teach me about molecules as a little six year old,” Helen says. “I think that’s my earliest memory of science.” As a teenager, when her dad got sick...
“Our animal models wander around in paddocks, eat grass, and are well cared for. In many ways, they’re just normal sheep,” says BRNZ Principal Investigator, Prof. Russell Snell. But those sheep are special, because they’re helping Russell and his colleagues at the...
We proudly present Brain Research New Zealand’s contribution to ‘Every Three Seconds’, a news and current affairs style programme that explores the risks, growth and future response to dementia. It tells the stories of those who are impacted by dementia and those who...
Dr Tracy Melzer is a medical physicist with a sub-speciality in brain imaging techniques. His work involves looking at the brain using imaging technologies like MRI. In 2016 Tracy won the Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship. The fellowship awarded Tracy a...
An exciting discovery by Brain Research New Zealand researchers could pave the way for Alzheimer’s to be diagnosed by a simple blood test. The discovery was made as part of a $4.6 million Health Research Council of New Zealand programme grant, directed by Prof Cliff...