Summary:
As you watch the video, think about these questions:
Captions:
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Ash: This is better than the doctors.
So how does the brain develop and change over a lifetime?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: The brain as you know is a very, very complicated structure.
It starts out from just a few cells and it expands and folds all these cells divide and form separate layers.
The outer layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, is most advanced in primates such as ourselves and there
are many, many folds and within those folds there are many, many nerve cells or neurones.
So from a very early age your brain is rapidly developing and it has this great capacity to acquire knowledge
and it continues to acquire that capacity with age.
But if you have something, some damage to your brain, say you have a brain injury when you're young chances
are that your brain will adapt and the damaged areas will be taken over by areas that are still healthy.
But as you become an adult the belief is that new nerve cells don't regrow.
Don't grow so that damage remains.
So people adults who have a stroke they lose function in part of their body because that part of the brain
has been damaged but young children generally there is some recovery.
So yes, it does develop over age over time but it's fairly well developed at an early age but there are still some capacity for regrowth.
Ash: I wanted to ask you about brains but why have I got all this equipment on me?
Vaughan: Well this is a very specialised device for recording your blood pressure without sticking a tube into your artery.
You may ask, why am I interested in your blood pressure when you're specifically interested in the brain?
Well we know that the brain controls your blood pressure.
The brain controls not just your muscles, it controls the parts of the nerves that constrict the blood
vessels and when the blood vessels constrict your blood pressure goes up.
I'm interested in how the brain controls blood pressure because we know that people with heart failure,
people with high blood pressure have problems with the brain control of this system.
Summary:
As you watch the video, consider these questions:
Captions:
Ash: How important was your study of science at school?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Well I enjoyed science I knew that I wanted to do science.
I didn't do particularly well at high school but once I got into university things went really well.
So I chose subjects, anatomy, physiology that I knew I needed to study the human nervous system.
So I did a bachelor of science for three years and then I did an honours year which is basically a year in a research lab and that is exciting.
You're given a project, you do all the work you analyse it write it up and then if you get first class honours
which is what I did you can get a scholarship to do a PhD.
Then I went overseas to Sweden for two years and America for a year came back to Australia in '94 had my own lab had to apply for research funds.
So it's a very, very long apprenticeship science it was very rewarding because it's very creative coming up
with ideas your testing those ideas and you're coming up with new things all the time, you're meeting other
scientists your exploring different avenues of research, so yes I find it very, very exciting.
Ash: So how did you further yourself to get to a position to where you are now?
Vaughan: Yes well it's all about applying yourself.
If you have a passion you will do well in life.
I acquired a passion for science and if you apply yourself and things go well for you, you apply for funding,
you write good grants you will continue to be funded and you will progress.
You will develop an international profile as well as a national profile you'll be invited to give talks all over the world.
People will want to come to your labs and work with you.
And that's what's happened.
It's taken a long time.
I completed my PhD in 1986, so it's been a long time, a long, long apprenticeship to get to where I am now
in this very exciting venture as professor of physiology at this brand new school of medicine here at the University of Western Sydney.
The important point is, if you've got a passion and the drive within, you will succeed.
Summary:
As you watch the video, consider these points:
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Ash: Why should young people choose to become scientists?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Science is creative as I've said.
I see it more in the light of the visual arts because you're coming up with ideas.
You're generating these ideas in your head, you're coming up with hypotheses that you can test.
So good science is all about coming up with testable hypotheses but you shouldn't cling to them.
So if a hypothesis fails on the basis of the experimental data that you've obtained, throw it out come up with another one.
So you don't have these strong belief systems you're just developing models scientific models in your head and testing them in the laboratory.
So I can't emphasise enough how much fun science is.
It gives you great capacity to see the world.
So I'm off to a conference in Japan in a month, very exciting.
I've just been to America.
So it does allow a lot of travel.
You have to work hard of course but the rewards are there.
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