Prof Nicola Kayes (Centre for Person Centred Research, AUT) and her team have just launched GREY MATTERS, a website for people who are experiencing changes to their memory and thinking. It is a website to learn about the ageing brain and how to keep your brain...
Your Brain Health
Students from Hoani Waititi Marae visit our neuroscience labs
Community wide engagement is a crucial way to future proof our research communities, support the development of a thriving Māori workforce within STEM fields, and to enrich our own research experience through community involvement. A key strategy to advance this...
Deciphering the role of grafted pericytes in mouse motor cortex
A Brain Research New Zealand funded collaboration - Prof Ruth Empson, Prof Mike Dragunow, Assoc Prof Stephanie Hughes and Dr Andrew Clarkson PhD student Manju Ganesh (University of Otago) recently won the Sir Grafton Elliot-Smith Poster Award at the 2019 Australasian...
Prof Valery Feigin elected as Fellow of Royal Society Te Apārangi
BRNZ investigator Prof Valery Feigin (AUT) has been elected as both a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Valery was elected as one of 19 new Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellows, who are recognised for their...
BRNZ awards Māori and Pacific Summer Research Scholarships
In 2019, Brain Research New Zealand once again awarded Māori Summer Research Scholarships. These scholarships aim to support Māori students in completing a 10-week neuroscience research project at one of our four partner universities. We have received impressive...
Dr Meg Spriggs: From mild cognitive impairment to magic mushrooms
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...
Dementia from a Māori perspective: The importance of cultural identity and whānau
In a world first, Dr Makarena (Margaret) Dudley has described Māori understandings and experiences of the ageing brain and dementia. Her research highlights the importance of cultural identity, oranga wairua (spiritual wellbeing) and whānau support for caring for...
Dr Anne-Marie Jackson receives Te Kōpūnui Māori Research Award
Dr Anne-Marie Jackson (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Kahu o Whangaroa, Te Roroa), Associate Investigator at BRNZ, has just received the Royal Society Te Apārangi Te Kōpūnui Māori Research Award. The award is given to recognise innovative Māori research with...
Brain Research New Zealand supports ground-breaking play about living with dementia
Here in New Zealand, people are living longer, and the average life expectancy for both men and women has steadily increased since the turn of the twentieth century. In 1981, people aged 65+ represented less than 10% of the population [1]. Today that fraction is...
Untangling neurodegenerative complexity through collaboration
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,...
Could self-regulating synapses help us better understand Alzheimer’s?
The University of Otago’s Dr Owen Jones never planned to come to New Zealand. Looking for adventure after completing a psychology and neuroscience degree at the University of Liverpool, he moved to Japan to teach English. There, he met a kiwi woman, “and you can...
Dementia Prevention Research Clinic launches in Christchurch
The Dementia Prevention Research Clinic has officially opened in Christchurch on July 26 – the third in a national network of clinics established by Brain Research New Zealand - Rangahau Roro Aotearoa (BRNZ). With the launch of the Christchurch Dementia Prevention...