On the horizon
The BRAIN magazine
Understanding how a brain develops is an enormous but incredibly important challenge. We are currently at the tip of the metaphoric iceberg for understanding brain development. Each new study gives us more information that expands our knowledge about the brain and helps in preventing, managing and treating the diseases and disorders that can afflict it.
Professor Bruno van Swinderen.
Professor Bruno van Swinderen.
Understanding sleep and consciousness
Professor Bruno van Swinderen.
The tiny fruit fly is offering key insights into brain development. The van Swinderen lab uses flies to study consciousness and sleep. We know rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is critical during development, but we do not know why. QBI researchers believe it might be key to how we become conscious. By understanding this mysterious process first in flies, they believe that one day they will be able to understand it in humans.
How do stem cells become neurons?
Professor Helen Cooper.
The Cooper lab is unravelling the molecular mechanisms underpinning brain development. What molecules direct a stem cell to become a certain type of neuron or guide axons to follow a predetermined route? Recently, their work has linked genes controlling these molecules to mutated genes in autism and schizophrenia, suggesting possible clues about the molecular bases of neuropsychiatric disorders. Their goal is to explore these links further, as well as learn more about the molecular processes directing brain development.
Professor Helen Cooper.
Professor Helen Cooper.
Professor Darryl Eyles.
Professor Darryl Eyles.
Development origins of schizophrenia
Professor Darryl Eyles.
The Eyles lab is making exciting progress in understanding the developmental roots of schizophrenia with a focus on dopamine systems, showing that alterations to maternal nutrition, and exposure to prenatal hypoxia or infection all change how early dopamine neurons develop. Now, they are investigating whether these environmental factors converge to affect dopamine release in the striatum region of the brain and how pharmacological control of dopamine release could offer a new approach to treating or even preventing schizophrenia.
Tracking the impact of early educational experiences on
human brain development
Professor Karen Thorpe.
Early care and education services are attended by 1.3 million Australian children each week, spending up to 10,000 hours in these services before school entry. These hours coincide with the most critical time in human synapse formation, a process entrained by early cognitive and social learning experiences that potentiates a child’s ongoing trajectories of learning and behaviour. The Thorpe Lab applies longitudinal tracking of children from early childhood throughout schooling to inform policy and practice to support human learning.
Professor Karen Thorpe.
Professor Karen Thorpe.
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