A new direction for Brain Sciences UNSW

14 November 2005

A UNSW researcher is part of an international team that will study the ability of the brain to rewire after damage caused by Alzheimer's Disease and other types of dementia, stroke, tumours and infection.

Neuroscientist Dr Michael Breakspear, who is based at The Black Dog Institute, is the Australian member of The Brain Network Recovery Group (Brain NRG), which has just been awarded the prestigious James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Bridging Brain, Mind and Behaviour - Collaborative Award, valued at US$4 million (A$5.3 million).

"We will be looking at brains which have been subject to injury from a clinical, cognitive and computational perspective," Dr Breakspear said. "This group will look at brain injury and its recovery, integrating these three domains more tightly than has been achieved before."

This would lead to large-scale computer simulations of how brain networks may reconfigure after injury and may help predict better clinical outcomes.

As part of this project, Dr Breakspear and colleagues at the Prince of Wales Hospital's Neuropsychiatric Institute will take MRI scans of 40 healthy subjects and the same number of people with early dementia.

"We know that some people with early stage dementia continue to function quite well for many years, but others show evidence of cognitive decline quite quickly," Dr Breakspear said.

"We think that the efficiency in the way in which a brain switches from doing an easy task to doing a hard task will predict this decline. We will be developing a new range of tasks for subjects to perform, and new methods of measuring brain activity whilst they do these tasks."

The research could lead to a test that determines those who are most at risk. Ultimately doctors could tailor programs to better prevent the decline in patients.

Dr Breakspear joins scientists from eight research organisations, including the University of Toronto, Cornell University and University College (London) to form Brain NRG.

For more information see www.brainnrg.org.