Tall Poppies of SA Science 2019 announced
SA’s top scientists have been honoured at the 2019 Tall Poppies awards, with brain researchers dominating the awards. PLUS: How research has changed over time
Brilliant scientists are turning their minds to the mystery of memory and mental wellbeing in new brain stimulation laboratories at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
The University’s new senior research fellow Dr Nigel Rogasch at SAHMRI has returned home after nearly 10 years at Monash University to pursue research into schizophrenia and other disorders, as well as the understanding of healthy brain function.
He’s among the eight early career researchers to be named Tall Poppies of SA Science tonight at an awards ceremony in the University of Adelaide’s historic Barr Smith Library Reading Room.
“I’ve always been interested in how the brain works,” Dr Rogasch said.
“It’s fascinating to think how a biological organ like the brain can store information and then use that information, it’s a really interesting topic.”
This year half of the award winners (four of the eight) focus on matters of the mind, from learning and attention, to environmental influences on psychological disorders, and possible treatments for internet gaming addiction.
Dr Rogasch says many of the debilitating symptoms associated with schizophrenia, including impaired memory and an inability to concentrate, currently have no effective treatments.
His research combines non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroimaging to uncover differences between people with healthy cognitive function and those with schizophrenia. This research has the potential to inform new treatments for improving cognitive function across a vast range of brain disorders.
To do this he uses some of the most powerful tools of neuroscience, such as EEG, while placing a coil in the shape of a figure-8 on the head that delivers transcranial brain stimulation.
“We measure these brain waves or oscillations from people while they’re holding things in memory and try and see what features of those oscillations can predict who has memory that is working well and who has memory that is not working so well,” Dr Rogasch said.
“We also use EEG to record how people’s brains respond to non-invasive brain stimulation, to probe different areas and see how well they’re functioning.”
BRAIN WAVES THROUGH TIME
Young Adelaide scientists are carrying on in the fine tradition of their forebears, using all the tools at their disposal in the quest to solve the great mysteries of our time.
Some tools, such as the EEG machine shown here, have hardly changed. Others, like computers, are barely recognisable.
Electroencephalography (EEG) was invented long ago. Electrodes on the scalp measure voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current within the neurons of the brain.
German physiologist and psychiatrist Hans Berger (1873-1941) recorded the first human EEG in 1924.
Now new EEG and brain stimulation laboratories have been established in the University of Adelaide Medical School and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, with the arrival of senior research fellow Dr Nigel Rogasch from Monash University.
He seeks to understand the brain, the biological basis of memory and the causes of mental illness, to find better treatments.
“Remarkably, EEG technology hasn’t changed all that much,” Dr Rogasch said.
“The hardware itself has improved, we can record from a lot more channels now and we can record a lot faster than we used to, but the little squiggles that you get look more or less the same as what they did back when the scientists first started doing these recordings.”
Dr Rogasch says EEG systems have also become a lot more mobile, so it’s possible to take these devices out and about.
That’s what Flinders University psychology lecturer Dr Oren Griffiths did when he took the technology out to schools. He developed an EEG device to measure children’s brain activity while they were doing puzzles and games, as part of studies on attention.
Dr Griffiths is one of the young scientists carrying on the strong traditions of neuroscience at Flinders University, home of the nation’s first Centre for Neuroscience, established
in 1977.
Another is Associate Professor Sarah Cohen-Woods, who is studying the age-old question of “nature or nurture” when it comes to human behaviour. She wants to understand how the environment can influence our genetic predisposition to certain psychological disorders. It’s possible childhood maltreatment or adversity moderates the genetic risk of depression and other mental illness.
TALL POPPIES
All three fine young scientists are among the eight to be named Tall Poppies of SA Science 2019 tonight at a ceremony in the University of Adelaide’s Barr Smith Library Reading Room.
The Australian Institute of Policy and Science created the Tall Poppy Campaign in 1998 to celebrate achievement in the sciences and address an alarming decline in the number of young people entering the scientific field.
That was the centenary of the birth of Lord Howard Florey, a great SA scientist, who shared a Nobel Prize for his work on penicillin but remained largely unknown.
Campaigners considered that to be another case of the so-called tall poppy syndrome — the Australian tendency to overlook success in fields other than sports and some sections of the arts, and knock down anyone who stood out from the crowd.
Now, every year in most states, the best young scientists are officially recognised and encouraged to take their research out into
the community.
Anyone interested in having a scientist visit their school, community centre or other event, or would like to organise a visit to laboratory, can email project officer Louisa.Esdaile@sa.gov.au
A DOSE OF HISTORY
It’s interesting to explore the history of SA science and find parallels between the research of days gone by and modern lines of inquiry.
The 1978 cosmic ray detector demonstration is an amusing image. These days researchers travel to remote and exotic locations to study cosmic rays, such as the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina and the IceCube experiment buried under 1.6km of ice in Antarctica.
More than 50 years ago, University of Adelaide clinical psychology lecturer J. H. Court, honorary consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was interested in a method of shock or aversion therapy for alcoholics. A photograph published in The Advertiser on September 17, 1965, shows Mr Court demonstrating the method with nurse Julie Shannon posing as a “patient” in the psychiatric ward at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Now University of Adelaide senior research fellow Dr Daniel King, another Tall Poppy of 2019, is taking a different approach to the treatment of addiction, with a focus on the modern plague known as “internet gaming disorder”.
His work has identified practical ways to combat excessive gaming, such as challenging unhelpful thoughts, understanding the ways that games are designed to be addictive, and promoting “technology-free” days.
DIVISIVE TECHNOLOGY
Clearly computers have become far more elaborate, engaging and addictive than they were in the early days.
The machine built by former Glengowrie High School science teacher Chris Illert, pictured in The Advertiser on June 25, 1975, looks pretty basic but it was a major advance on the room-sized clunkers of the previous decade.
Now there is a growing divide between the technology haves and have-nots. At the University of South Australia, senior lecturer of information studies Dr Jia Tina Du is studying the behaviour of vulnerable communities such as the elderly in the digital age, to improve online inclusion in Australian society.
Meanwhile, University of Adelaide senior lecturer in applied mathematics Dr Giang Nguyen is using probability and statistics to develop models to support decision-making. She has applied these models to a wide array of fields, ranging from cancer treatment to predicting the power grid performance.
BACK IN THE LAB
In the same university’s molecular and biomedical science unit, Dr Danny Wilson is studying malaria, a disease that has kept scientists busy ever since the 1880 discovery of the parasites in the blood of malaria patients by French physician Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran.
Every year more than 400,000 children around the world die from the disease. The mosquitoes that transmit the malaria parasite are becoming resistant to insecticides, and in some places, the parasite is becoming resistant to drug therapies that were effective.
Dr Wilson has identified possible new antimalarial drugs and developed new tools to fast-track malaria vaccine development.
Biomedical engineer Dr Marnie Winter, at UniSA, spends her days studying the blood of pregnant women. She’s developing technology for non-invasive prenatal screening, aimed at improving pregnancy monitoring and outcomes.
From five weeks into a pregnancy, foetal cells that naturally break off from the placenta can be found in the mother’s bloodstream.
These rare cells, occurring about one in a billion of the mother’s cells, enable the
non-invasive testing for a range of pregnancy conditions. However, current technologies used to isolate these cells are poor.
Dr Winter’s research has focused on developing technology that can separate these rare foetal cells from the mother’s cells. This technology is currently in the process of being further developed and commercialised for future clinical implementation.
Hear “Short Stories from Tall Poppies” at the SA Museum on September 4 from 6.15pm to 8.30pm. Tickets $12 from eventbrite.com.au with drinks available for purchase